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I am a Journalist/Activist. That’s what it would say on the TV screen because this disease keeps chasing me.

I remember when pitching a story in the news room about training doctors on telling families bad news, the producer looking a bit dispassionately about it, saying well, we know people get sick. So what’s the story here?
If you consider that while 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer this year, yet there were 20 million key word searches for “cancer” on major search engines in the first quarter of this year alone, then we understand people want to know more. Cancer is not just about cells gone wild and hearts broken. The cancer story is also about how life changes on a dime, and what we’re made of in how we respond. We learn who are our friends. We learn about sitting on the knife’s edge in that precarious place called hope.

Plenty of people want to know about this mysterious disease—how to prevent cancer, who gets it and why modern science still cannot explain the mystery of spontaneous remission. We care because everyone one of us will hold the hand of a cancer patient in our life time. When it happens, we get to prove our worth to ourselves and our loved ones.
Okay, enough evangelizing. I want to thank all of you who emailed your story ideas and inspiration. I put the challenge out there and you came back with great feedback. All these sites that offer text, medical opinions and research—but , you ask, where’s the bottom line, right? You’re diagnosed. You want answers—straight and to the point. Over the next weeks, I will take on your topics; from talking to kids about cancer to the ramifications of genetic testing and giving you resources that you can share with your doctor. By joining together, you will be an important voice in creating a larger professional resource. More to come on that, but first, let’s get started.
For the next three months, I’ll be focusing on solutions different caregivers and patients have come up with in getting answers when they encounter road blocks:

• Insurance coverage
• Getting family support, or dealing with the lack of support
• Information on treatment options

CLReporting can be our platform for testing ideas.