Stand Up To Cancer

Dana Jennings
If you haven't read Dana Jennings occasional guest entries on the NYT's Well Blog, now's a great time to start. Jennings has been blogging about his experiences since being diagnosed with prostate cancer. In his most recent entry, he writes about gratitude: "I'm well past the anger that I felt after my diagnosis, but I still get frustrated sometimes by the physical challenges I face in the wake of prostate cancer, wishing that by mid-afternoon my brain wouldn't become a test pattern as my body begs for a nap," he says. "Gratitude is an antidote to the dark voice of illness that whispers to us, that insists that all we have become is our disease. Living in the shadow of cancer has granted me a kind of high-definition gratitude. I've found that when you're grateful, the world turns from funereal gray to incandescent Technicolor."
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/jennings/

Megan Engle-Shroeder

In a comment on last week's "With You, We Stand," one of SU2C's followers on Facebook, Megan Engle-Shroeder, shared her story. "I'm battling skin cancer while pregnant and it's a lot tougher than I lead on at times," she wrote. "My reality is looking at my scars . . . the eye-opening part is it opens your eyes to the true value of life and how fragile, precious and unappreciated it is."

Deborah Marqui

An article in the Chicago Tribune profiles Deborah Marqui, who retreated to her two-acre garden during recovery from two battles with cancer, and has now opened up the space as a "healing garden" for others facing the same struggle. "I'm not a master gardener; these are not formal gardens," she says. "But I don't look at it as work. I found that when I was in the gardens, I lost track of time and had no thoughts of cancer and whether it would come back . . . I see this as a gift from God that I can share with others."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-healing-garden-w-zone-29-jul29,0,5064865.story

Alec and Vananh Martinez

In this moving tribute out of Oregon, a community remembers Alec Martinez, age three, who recently passed away from an ependymoma brain tumor. Alec was diagnosed a few months after his mother, Vananh, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. "Last year, around this time, Vananh's duties as a mom changed," said Alec's uncle Duyanh. "She was diagnosed with cancer and it changed her ability to be a mom a little bit. After several months of therapy and treatment, Alec was diagnosed with his own cancer. Vananh wiped her tears away and went onto another level as a mom. From that day on, you would never see her complaining or talking about herself. That showed me a lot about her strength."
http://beavertonvalleytimes.com/news/story.php?story_id=124896930052302200

As always, we invite you to share your stories with us in the comments below.