I am shocked by how many people and families are affected by cancer. As I talk more freely about David’s battle with cancer and our struggle, I have gotten to know many others that have been affected with cancer. Some have/had cancer, have a loved one with cancer, or lost a family member to this beast.

This beast has interrupted or destroyed so many lives. The faces of people affected are vast, it does not discern age, race, gender, or ethnicity. There are so many conflicting messages on what causes various types of cancer, what causes one form may be said to prevent another. It seems like a guessing game. It speaks to the fact that there is so much unknown about cancer.

Granted some progress have been made in fighting some forms of cancer but clearly we are still so far behind in the fight against this beast. Some of the cancers that have been well funded and research such as breast cancer still continues to take one too many lives. And there are so many other types of cancers lacking considerably in research and progress such as bladder cancer. For bladder cancer, one of the standard chemo has been available for over two decades and has dismal effectiveness especially when the cancer is more advanced.

Why is the dismal prognosis status-quo for many patients with advanced cancer while most routine medical check-ups do not allow for early diagnosis of many cancers? What can be done to better detect more cancers earlier? What can be done to better understand the cause of cancer?

David was good about going to the Doctor. He had his routine medical exams and made periodic trips to the doctors whenever he did not feel good. His primary care doctor knew him well as did his Urologist. So with all the frequent visits and periodic complaints about discomfort in his bladder, how come bladder cancer was not ruled out earlier? Why were they so quick to assume he had UTI and frequently prescribed antibiotics? Even if it was UTI, at what point would it have made sense to try to better understand the cause of the reoccurring UTIs rather than just treating the symptoms? How did a Urologist fail to recognize some of the hallmark symptoms of bladder cancer?

In my irrational state of grief and also despair during David’s illness, I have wondered if the prefer approach for handling cancer is to manage the disease rather than curing it. People have become accustomed to words like remission – a word that clearly does not reflect a cure but in my view may add to the anticipation that the beast may return.

Let’s kill the cancer beast! We are an intelligent generation, the progress in science and technology in the last century has been remarkable. There have been so much progress in treating and curing diseases that devastated lives centuries and even decades ago. Cancer will not be an exception.  We need better treatment with better results, not months improvement in survival, not years, we need a cure. We need medications that do not cause worse symptoms than the disease.

I write without a solution but with great hope that it can be done. I am optimistic for our generation and I am more optimistic for my children’s generation. No cancer death should be in vain…..let’s conquer this beast.