Stand Up To Cancer

Dear friends of SU2C--

As many of you know, I am one of the newest ambassadors to Stand Up To Cancer. This is, unfortunately, a very personal fight for me, as I was diagnosed with a rare form of Hodgkin's called CD20 Positive Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

At first I was so torn as to whether I should take my battle public. It is very a private, scary, lonely, angry, ugly time and I didn't know what would happen if I chose to open my life up to complete strangers once again.

I had yet to cry during this whole process--from my diagnosis, to beginning treatment, to my continuing chemotherapy. But I recently received a letter from a young fan that watched Katie Couric and me on Larry King Live a few weeks ago. The floodgates opened and I unloaded buckets of tears all over my now-hairless body.

I received a note from a girl named Jesse that has made it all worth it -- every needle prick, blood drop, x-ray, fallen hair and sleepless night. It's all worth it. The idea that I have motivated this young adult to stay positive and beat the hell out of her own cancer is all I need to carry me through my own twisted path to survivorship. I made the right decision.

So, I want to take this time to thank you. THANK YOU, Jesse, for helping me realize a dream -- my dream to help others with my cancer diagnosis. SU2C has given me the platform to use my disease as an opportunity to raise awareness for cancer in young adults under 40, like me.

Unlike pediatrics and older adults, survival rates in young adults between 15-39 years old have not really improved in 30 years -- across the board for all types of cancer. That basically means my generation has the same chance of getting cancer and dying from it as we did in the 1970's. Young adults are the only age group to see an increase in mortality.

This year, nearly 70,000 young adults will be diagnosed, and the disease will take the lives of 10,000 Americans in that same age group. Every 7 minutes, a young adult is diagnosed with cancer. Every hour, a young adult dies from cancer. Crazy, right?

I want to be a megaphone for this generation. I want to support all young adults with cancer and rally the Twitter generation to support its own.

We each have role to play in supporting cancer research, and this is mine. The voice of the young adult with cancer is now being heard.

More research dollars will only improve survival rates for young adults when we change the fundamental infrastructure of symptom literacy as part of standard medical education for students, interns, and residents who are in their 20s and 30s.

The goal would be to ensure prompt detection and reduce the risk of Stage IV cancers, so that young adults will benefit from translational research more effectively. That's exactly what SU2C and their Dream Teams are fundraising for.

So please--do your part to Stand Up To Cancer. Visit SU2C.org to donate, or learn about the work the organization is doing to put an end to one of America's leading causes of death. This is a disease that affects men, women, the young, the old-- and even those of us who think our diagnosis is 30 years away.

Be well,
Ethan Zohn