Seth Dillingham is looking for sponsors for the American Cancer Society’s upcoming Relay for Life. Seth’s been doing this for a few years, and he’s getting close to his goal of $400 this year.
Cancer is one of those diseases that we’ve spent a lot of money researching which still persists, largely because we now know that preventing and curing cancer is a vastly more difficult prospect that was imagined when Nixon launched his war on cancer in 1971. But we are getting closer to having a better handle on cancer, and the multitude of different approaches that are being investigated are mind boggling. But, of course, someone needs to foot the bill for that research and treatment.
Most people know somebody who has died of cancer. Two people I know died of cancer in the last few years, and the really horrifying part was that a) they died relatively young, and b) they died relatively quickly. An acquaintance who discovered he had throat cancer died just a few months later. A coworker lasted just 6 months after being diagnosed (and undergoing experimental treatments for her cancer).
Even with my aunt’s Huntington’s at least she and her family got several years to prepare for and come to terms with the disease. But to wake up one morning and be told that some random mutation is going to kill you in a few months and there’s nothing anyone can do about it is downright obscene.