Why Cancer Survivor Day Is Not (As Cynics Would Allege) Just Another Cancer Lobby Hallmark Holiday

A friend made me aware that today is Cancer Survivor Day and asked that I make others aware of it. I'd be remiss to not do so, given that cancers of all kinds are in my gene pool and in my family otherwise—I have a BRCA mutation for example; and people thought that I was being funny or whatever—they can ask Katherine Czarnecki Chokola, z"l; she died of Breast Cancer. They can ask her cousin Tony's son Jack, whom survived Colon Cancer and later died of Leukemia (partly because, I'm sure, the Colon Cancer affected him despite that he survived it).

With that, Dad has Chron's (which is linked to Colon Cancer) and I have IBS (and I do not buy for a second that IBS and Chron's are not linked). Point being, I am well aware that cancer is not a game, gimmick, joke, etc.; and I would have never claimed to have a BRCA mutation were the evidence of it not in my own family line. By the way, part of why I volunteer for the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network is because of the medical history of cancer in my family, not to mention that Bladder Cancer patient Kevin Williamson (who takes the newly-discovered drug to treat Bladder Cancer) had "unbearable gas" that made him aware of his Bladder Cancer (and with IBS, gas and the bladder are linked—so, imagine adding Bladder Cancer to that!)

That's also something about which I ask people to think on Cancer Survivor Day: those charities, walk-a-thons, etc. are not games, gimmicks, jokes, etc.

By the way, I just remembered: Michael Douglas is a cancer survivor, given that he had Throat/Oral/whatever kind of cancer; and his father had some kind of cancer, too (So's being a Danilovich—and I've discussed that whole megillah before!).