American Cancer Society More Birthdays Blog, The Official Sponsor of Birthdays

Immersing herself in biology to help finish the fight against cancer

Eyerusalem Lemma (her friends call her Ey) is a college sophomore who, when many of her peers are deciding on a major, has committed her life’s work to fighting cancer. She’s already on track to earn a doctorate degree and is conducting advanced scientific research.

Ey is one of hundreds of people who’ve gone to www.cancer.org/lifelist to make an American Cancer Society life list. Like the others, Ey wants to help finish the fight against cancer so everyone has time to achieve their dreams.

She breaks down her life list.

√ Became a Ronald E. McNair Scholar

The Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program is helping students from underrepresented demographics prepare for doctorate studies. I qualify as an African-American and woman in science. As a long-life planner, I’m thrilled to make a long-term commitment to biology, years of study and, ultimately, helping defeat cancer.

√ Signed lease on first apartment

I’m finally moving off the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, Minn.) campus. No longer will I have to share 4 washer/dryers with 150 other girls! My roommates and I are moving into our new apartment this weekend. It will make a great headquarters to plan our campus’ next Relay For Life event. We are all involved with Relay through Colleges Against Cancer. I’m a co-team captain and the publicity director for our campus, one of my roommates is a vice president in Colleges Against Cancer, and the other is my Relay co-team captain.

√ Traveled to 14 states

I was born in Ethiopia. We moved to Oregon shortly thereafter so my father could pursue a graduate degree in agriculture. When I was in first grade, we moved to Fargo, N.D., where he had a teaching position, and when I was in ninth grade, we moved to St. Paul, Minn., where my father worked for the state Department of Agriculture. I love to travel because you learn a lot by experiencing other cultures, even within your own country. Travel gives you a broader perspective and better ability to consider other perspectives when you’re forming opinions or voting. Just recently, I took a civil rights tour of the South with my fellow McNair scholars. It was an incredible experience.

√ Passed Ochem I

That’s organic chemistry I. Every biology major has to take it, and everyone hates it. Well, some deluded chemistry majors like it but only because they have to take even harder courses later. As if it weren’t challenging enough, I had a respiratory infection for half the semester that ran me down to the point where my study partners had to keep poking me to keep me from falling asleep. But with the amazing support of friends and professors, I passed!

□ Earn a PhD.

I’m planning to earn a PhD in cellular biology, cancer biology, or immunology with my ultimate goal of finishing the fight by understanding cancer and figuring out how to stop it. I’m fortunate to already be involved in a research lab at nearby Macalester College through the McNair Program, studying pain in mice. I hope to become more involved in research labs on campus at UST as well.

□ Help finish the fight against cancer

I first became interested in fighting cancer in high school where, without a lot of thought, I heard about the American Cancer Society Relay For Life and signed up to help. When I started meeting survivors and families, and hearing story after story at my first Relay For Life event, I was profoundly moved and became permanently committed to fighting cancer. Although I don’t have any direct experience with cancer, my father passed away from a stroke, so I can empathize with the many struggles cancer patients and their families endure.

I’m interested in helping finish the fight against cancer on 2 levels. On the scientific level, cancer is a great conundrum, and I’m optimistic that we can solve it. On the human level, I just want the struggle to end. With the leadership of the American Cancer Society, we’ve seen a lot of progress. I’m confident it can continue. If people don’t stand up and fight, it won’t go away. I hope that when I tell my grandchildren about cancer, the concept is so foreign to them they look at me in shock and horror.

□ Get my driver’s license

Although I read 1,000 words per minute and do pretty well with some challenging courses, I failed my driving test twice. I have some fear of the immensity of these machines – cars – and the fragility of the other lives out there, so I end up not practicing as much as I should. My friends, however, have pledged to help me get the practice I need!

•••

Be like Ey and make your life list now: www.cancer.org/lifelist. It’s easy and fun!

Giving, determined and loving school

Jen Hodshon, entering her senior year at the University of South Carolina, is one of hundreds of people who’ve gone to www.cancer.org/lifelist to make an American Cancer Society life list. Like the others, Jen wants to help finish the fight against cancer so everyone has time to achieve their dreams.

Life list photo: Jen receiving University of South Carolina Woman of the Year finalist award.

Some intriguing accomplishments and goals! Let’s have Jen break down her life list.

√ Started my own nonprofit at age 9

When I was 9 and my brother was 5, we started a nonprofit called Bookmark My Words. I’d had a pet peeve about folded pages in books, so we created bookmarks, colored them, sold them for $1 each and donated the money to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Classmates and neighbors got involved. When I entered 8^th grade and our family moved from New Jersey to Cary, N.C., we started giving the money to UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chapel Hill. Over the years, we raised $50,000 with our bookmarks and community events we created like “Caroling for a Cause.” My brother, now a junior in high school, is still involved. I’ve been focusing my service on American Cancer Society Relay For Life fundraising walks.

√ Was my high school mascot

The city built us a new school my junior year, and we were now the Catamounts. A catamount is kind of a “mountain panther,” and they’re uncommon outside of North Carolina. I was the Catamount for our school junior and senior year. I wore a very furry – and very hot! – costume to all the football games. I didn’t have any special talents. I just danced and ran around and took pictures with little kids. It was fun- and very hot!

√ Fell in love with my university

I just can’t say enough good things about my university. It seems like the only institution left that sees you as a person versus a number. They find out what your goals are and make sure you get there. I’m very involved: I’m a tour guide, I help teach “University 101,” I run social media for faculty and staff and take care of the University VP’s blog. I love everything about USC, and the fact that the football team is playing well doesn’t hurt.

√ Directed Relay For Life for the University of SC

As I said, I’ve been raising money to fight cancer since age 9, but I never knew anyone who had cancer. Cancer was our cause mainly because mother said any money I made from my business had to go to someone who really needed it. We picked cancer out of the blue.

Jen Hodshon directed her university’s Relay For Life event, which she said raised $173,000.

But then on my 20^th birthday, I got a call that changed everything. My grandfather, who used to take us crabbing on Hilton Head, had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and given 3 weeks to live. A few days later, I was asked to direct our university’s Relay For Life event. I’d been involved freshman and sophomore years but was honestly looking to try something new. The news about my grandfather, however, hit me hard. I finally understood firsthand why it’s so important, and so meaningful, to be involved. I said, “Of course I’ll do it.”

We raised $173,000 this year, up $75,000 from last year, and increased participation to 2,800 people. Our Relay was the biggest non-football event we’ve had on campus.

□ End cancer forever

Although it’s exciting how much progress we’ve made over the past century, it’s sad we don’t have a cure yet. It’s one of those things we really need to focus on nationally and globally. If we can come together to figure out cancer, we’ll be able to solve a lot of other problems in this world.

□ Graduate a Gamecock

One more year!

□ Make an impact on the world

I’m majoring in elementary education. My long-term goal is to help make big changes to the public education system. We can’t be afraid of innovation in teaching and learning. I want to start by teaching in a high-risk area and earn my master’s and doctorate in education administration and policy. Poverty, whether urban or rural, correlates with low test scores, which eventually translate into more poverty, high crime rates and a vicious cycle that we desperately need to break. I think we can do it. That’s my passion.

···

Be like Jen and make your life list now: www.cancer.org/lifelist. It’s easy and fun!

It’s Stephanie Bolton, a survivor and graphic designer from Woodstock, Ga., who shares the details of how she got to this point:

In October 2010, I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) in my left breast. It was completely unexpected and was my first mammogram (2 years late). I never thought I would get breast cancer, so much so that I didn’t even go for my mamo at 40 like recommended.

In October 2010, I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) in my left breast. It was completely unexpected and was my first mammogram (2 years late). I never thought I would get breast cancer, so much so that I didn’t even go for my mamo at 40 like recommended.

One day, when I was coming home from one of my many doctor appointments, I was sitting at a red light and realized I hadn’t done any of the things in life that I “wanted to do someday.” We spend so much of our life saying, “ ‘One day’ I’m going to do this or that,” and we never stop to think that “one day” may never come. I decided at that point that once treatment was completed and I was able, I was going to start checking off my “one day” list.

About a year after my last chemo, I was at a party with one of my good friends, Gavin Karstensen, who I’ve known since we were teens involved in a local theatre group, Cobb Children’s Theatre, and I told him he had to take me hang gliding. I had seen on Facebook where he had gone. He told me about a friend who had connections at Skydive Georgia, and we all made plans to go. She thought I should start with the scarier sport first, and I was glad to since skydiving had always been a bucket list item for me anyway.

It took 3 tries before we actually got to go. The first time was cancelled due to weather; the second was cancelled due to plane issues. So by the third time I was very excited. I did it and it was awesome. It was a very freeing and thrilling experience. Between surviving cancer and skydiving, I really feel like I can do anything.

So now, no more waiting for “one day.” Now I’m making actually plans to check off the items on my list.

···

Like most people, Roger McLean has been touched by cancer. His father had prostate cancer and his mother-in-law died of pancreatic cancer. But despite his close ties to the disease, the 68-year-old Michigan man insists that has never been his motivation for getting involved with the American Cancer Society.

Roger McLean receives the “2012 Outstanding Road to Recovery Volunteer Driver Award” from Andrea Jones, transportation and lodging coordinator for the American Cancer Society’s Southeast Michigan office.

After a chance meeting in 2008 with a volunteer driver for the Society’s Road To Recovery® program, which provides cancer patients with rides to treatment, Roger says he was inspired to become a driver. And he hasn’t looked back. In the past 5 years, Roger has driven hundreds of patients thousands of miles, and it’s not unusual for him to put in a day with more than 100 miles for a single patient. He believes it’s his calling.

“I feel so fortunate to be such an intimate part of people’s lives,” he says. “I’ve made so many friends over these past few years and become a part of people’s families.”

Roger is motivated by these friendships and says that he’s inspired by the sincerity and honesty that cancer patients typically possess. “They’re willing to share their fears, how they are feeling, and they speak the truth,” he says. “It’s not a surface relationship like you have with most acquaintances.”

Many of the people Roger has driven have become more than friends, and their families have become his family, too.

Two years ago on Christmas Day, Roger took a call from a woman he had driven many times. She called to tell him she was dying, but she wanted him to know how thankful she was for his friendship and his help in getting her to the treatment she had desperately needed. Then, 48 hours later she passed.

Another former passenger passed away early on in Roger’s days volunteering, but he still keeps in contact with the man’s daughter as often as possible. He believes he serves as a link for her to someone who was there with her father near the end.

And even more of his former passengers are alive and well. Roger talks to and visits with many of them as often as he can.

Driving has even expanded Roger’s support of cancer patients by introducing him to platelet donation and spreading the word on Society programs and services at hospitals he visits. He recently volunteered to drive a bus full of platelet donors to a local hospital, so they could all get there for their donation. And in his frequent trips to the hospital he has met many other cancer patients that don’t need rides, but may need something else – like someone to talk to, financial help or a support group – and he’s able to pass along the American Cancer Society phone number and website to ensure those people get the support they need, too.

Roger says that the work he’s doing today is the most important he’s done his whole life.

“In all my efforts to make a difference in this life, I’ve failed,” he says. “I served in Vietnam and came home to people that spit on me. I was a Detroit police officer and by the time I retired, the city was much worse off than when I started. But I’ve never had a bad day driving a cancer patient. I know I’m making a difference in their life and their families’ lives, and I truly feel I finally found at 68 what I was called to do.”

Ten years ago, Kristin McQueen was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer. The 34-year-old Naperville, Ill., physical therapist has undergone 14 brain and neck surgeries since. She’s scheduled for number 15 this month, a craniotomy to treat nerve damage (“washing my hair this morning brought me to tears”).

Nevertheless, Kristin is looking for another challenge. A big one. She. Wants. To. Do. The. IRONMAN. World. Championship.

The event is a 140.6-mile triathlon this fall in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. It includes a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run – yes, all in one day. The holy grail of the sport, this event is known simply as “Kona.” Elite athletes earn their slots for Kona; others join a long-odds lottery. This year, however, The IRONMAN organization has set aside 7 slots for individuals who can prove they live up to the IRONMAN mantra “Anything is Possible.” They call it the Kona Inspired program.

Kristin wants in. And no, she doesn’t want them to shorten the distance. The Kona Inspired contest is her best chance. You get in by posting a short video showing how you live the IRONMAN mantra and attracting as many viewers’ votes as you can (more later on how that works).

But why does anyone, much less someone with her condition, want to do Kona?

“Kona is… the ultimate!” she says. “It’s where it all started, and the best of the best race there. It would be a dream come true to race there.”

Done that, kind of been there

Make no mistake, Kristin can do it. She’s done 17 marathons and 9 IRONMAN triathlons (like Kona, just elsewhere). All of the IRONMANs came after her diagnosis. She did one of them with one eye shut because of a cornea problem related to surgery. Remember the infamous 2007 Chicago marathon that was called off mid-race because of extreme heat? Kristin ran all 26.2 miles – 2 weeks after her first brain surgery.

Cancer has given Kristin shoulder damage that affects her swimming, nerve damage that affects her breathing (making the swim even trickier), constant pain, blurred vision in that eye, and vertigo (which makes the bike leg especially precarious).

“Running in particular has gotten me through everything since I’ve been diagnosed,” she told Triathlon News. “As long as I can run, I’m OK. It’s a way to reclaim my body from what’s going on. It’s just my meditative state, where I can get in my zone.”

Every time she races, she wears an American Cancer Society singlet with “Suck It Cancer” taped on the back. She’s raised more than $120,000 for the society since before her diagnosis, when she ran the 2002 Chicago marathon in honor of family friend Lou Anderson, who passed away of pancreatic cancer in 2000.

“My main purpose is to raise money so that nobody else has to go through what I have,” says Kristin. “Along with that, I want to show people that you can’t just give up when life beats you up a little. So many people let their doubts take over and they limit themselves. I want to see just how far I can go. Going through so many major surgeries and having to start over numerous times, I know that things can be taken away in an instant. Training is a blessing and racing is my expression of gratitude for life.”

How does she stay so positive?

“I’ve tried to maintain a sense of humor through everything,” she explains. It’s all pretty ridiculous when you think about it. I mean seriously, 9 brain surgeries with another on the way? A girl with a partial airway who can’t walk in a straight line but thinks riding a bike at 40mph down a hill is a good idea? It’s like a bad sitcom. The other piece of this is that I fully embrace the suck. There are some days (and sometimes weeks) where I just have to cry it out and have a little pity party. Once I get that stuff out, it’s much easier to look forward.”

Kristin inspires everyone she touches: “I have never met someone as unstoppable as Kristin,” says friend Tracy Jensen. “She is open, warm, generous, and in the 10 years she has been fighting this stupid cancer, she has never expected anything from anyone. She gives support to other patients and survivors and is an incredibly caring friend.”

So the contest is called Kona Inspired. If Kristin McQueen can’t inspire Kona, who can? If she doesn’t embody “Anything is Possible,” who does?

Let’s make this happen!

Here’s what we need to do:

• Watch Kristin’s ‘Kona Inspired’ video.
• Vote for it at least once, but you can vote as often as once a day.
• IRONMAN is going to choose 7 winning videos. Public interest, including the voting, makes up half the score in the initial judging through May 13, and all of it in the 3 final rounds (May 14-June 12), though 1 of the 7 will be a judges’ choice wild card.
• If When Kristin makes the finals, go back and vote for her video some more.
• Share the video and spread the word. Kristin’s friends are using these hashtags on Twitter: #SendKristinToKona and #KonaInspired

Kristin has done so much for us. If she gets to Kona, she’ll be raising money for the American Cancer Society and our 100^th birthday mission, finishing the fight against cancer. If she doesn’t get chosen, she’ll still be raising money for the American Cancer Society at the Chicago Marathon.

Fundraising aside, we believe that anything, including conquering one of the world’s most challenging athletic events, is possible for Kristin. So let’s vote for her early (like now) and often. And tell all our friends.

She’d do it for us.

···

Just 6 years ago, first-time director Steven Bernstein had it all: a long list of Hollywood screenwriting and cinematography credits, more money than he could spend – even a plane. The only thing he lacked was a good reason to get up in the morning.

He finally found that reason in a true story about two remarkable women: a courageous breast cancer survivor with a devastating family history of the disease and the equally courageous research physician who discovered the genetic link to breast cancer. Although it made him virtually penniless, he says, he eventually got the job done and is ready to share the film and the proceeds. “Decoding Annie Parker” will premiere with a charity benefit on Tuesday, April 2 in New York.

Annie Parker (Samantha Morton) was the first person diagnosed with BRCA1, the “breast cancer gene.” The movie traces 2 parallel struggles: One is Annie’s battle with cancer and its repercussions. She loses her mother and sister to breast cancer, and her own diagnosis, monumental in itself, vastly complicates her marriage.

The other struggle is researcher Mary-Claire King’s (Helen Hunt) quest to prove that genes really can cause breast cancer, something no one understood in 1990. “The film is the true story of 2 people linked together by their exceptional ability to surmount insuperable obstacles,” says Bernstein, the writer, producer and director.

What captivated him and suffuses the film is the mystery of how people like Annie survive extreme adversity. “What was in her character that made her strong enough to endure not just the illness, but what went on with her mother, what went on her sister, and what went on with her husband? I mean, Annie hasn’t just survived physically. She has survived psychologically. Anne is one of the most loving, centered, kindest, happiest people I’ve met. When you consider what she’s been through, she shouldn’t be any of those things,” says Bernstein. “She’s an object lesson for all of us, and that’s really what I wanted to make the film about.”

Going broke

Bernstein had his own struggles to overcome as well. Devoted to the idea of telling Annie’s story, or perhaps obsessed with it, he pitched the film full-time for five years. Strung along by members of the entertainment industry, Bernstein says he lost his house, car, the plane and eventually everything except the beans and peanut butter he subsisted on. Eventually financed by a like-minded group of producers, the script reached A-list actors who instantly saw what many bean counters had not: they had the rare story that was devastating yet somehow funny (which, let’s face it, is critical in a film about biology and cancer) – and important.

“I hate to sound like a cheesy trailer, but you laugh, you cry, you feel affection for the characters,” says Bernstein. “It’s entertaining, hugely life-affirming and about achieving ultimate triumphs over things like abandonment, illness, depression, self-pity, the establishment and cancer.”

An amalgam of strong women

Although the production budget was less than $2.5 million, the cast is that of a $30 million film, with numerous Academy Awards, Emmys, Golden Globes and box-office hits on its collective resume. “Hollywood gets a bad rap for supposedly being loaded with facile opportunists more concerned about self-promotion than anything important,” Bernstein says. “That has not been my experience here and certainly wasn’t my experience on the film. It was remarkable the support the film received because of what it was about. The actors sure weren’t there for the money.”

As in the general populace, many on the film have been touched by cancer. “The Anne Parker of the film is an amalgam of a great many people I’ve admired,” says Bernstein.  “As a piece of art, if you will, Annie Parker is every woman and everything I admire about strong women incorporated into one character.”

Parker and King embody what Bernstein considers a universal story: “All of us ultimately deal with the same issues – major life challenges. What’s important is how we manage them and emerge as people.”

The screenings and the cause

“Decoding Annie Parker” will premiere in New York City and will be shown at the Palm Beach Film Festival and Dallas International Film Festival before opening in theaters nationwide. Select screenings will directly benefit the American Cancer Society and other support organizations to help finish the fight against cancer.

“We wanted to collaborate with the leading experts in the field,” says Bernstein. “Not only is the American Cancer Society funding the ongoing work of Dr. King, but they have been at the forefront of nearly every significant cancer research breakthrough in recent history.” The Society has supported Dr. King’s work as an American Cancer Society Research Professor since 1994.

Many others contributed to what may be the most important film of Bernstein’s career. It has certainly been the most fulfilling. “So many people gathered together and made sacrifices to make this movie,” he says. “No one thought of this as a typical commercial project when I first started putting it together. But then gradually, as the model emerged and our wonderful cast signed on, we thought, here’s a film that can deliver an important message, return the producers’ investment, and contribute directly to the organizations that help people deal with the challenges presented on the screen. In the end, it’s a risky model, maybe a courageous model, or a mad model, I guess. But it’s one that we believe in and that we believe is going to work.”

“Decoding Annie Parker” will hold its first benefit screening on April 2 at the Directors Guild Theater in New York City. The general public is being invited to purchase tickets to help ongoing research and cancer support programs.

To purchase tickets to the premiere benefit, visit http://decodingannieparker.eventbrite.com.

To learn more about “Decoding Annie Parker,” visit www.DecodingAnnieParker.com.

No, not the presidential ballots, rather the ones cast in The American Cancer Society T-Shirt Design Challenge hosted by Threadless.com. Nearly 20,000 people voted on 110 designs for a More Birthdays-themed T-shirt. Here’s the winner!

Cool! Wait, what exactly is it?

“In Catalonia, Spain, there’s a tradition of building human towers at festivals,” explains contest winner Jacob Grant, 28, of Chicago. “These ‘castellers’ will come together and form a tower 6 to 10 people high with a child climbing to the very top!”

Castellers making a human tower (image courtesy of flickr/fer55.) Castell photo info

So Grant translated that idea for More Birthdays, replacing humans with cakes. “It’s a stack of 12 cake castellers forming a tower or castell (castle), with a victorious cupcake waving a birthday candle on top.

“The symbolism of these people supporting one another to achieve a great feat says something about what is possible with the support of those around you.”

Wow, that’s a terrific expression of the joy and determination at the heart of the More Birthdays movement.

“Also,” notes Grant, “a cake for each month of the year!”

On a serious note

The T-shirt challenge had a deeper meaning for the children’s book author/illustrator. “Like so many, cancer has affected my family directly,” he says. “Six years ago, we lost my cousin to mucinous adenocarcinoma. He was 30, and it’s a terrible loss the family will never forget.”

“Around the same time my aunt, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, successfully beat it into remission through treatment and surgery. I remember how invaluable each birthday seemed after my cousin was diagnosed. The message of ‘More Birthdays’ really hits it on the head.”

Born and raised in Ohio, Grant graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2006. He’s worked professionally as a graphic designer since then but has spent the past year creating children’s picture books as both author/illustrator.

Jacob Grant

When he first heard the news of his victory, he was “Ecstatic! It means so much to me. I put everything I have into my work and to receive such a positive response really keeps me going. I have great respect for the American Cancer Society, and was thrilled that my design could contribute to such a noble cause. Aside from that, the birthday theme was one that lends itself well to the cute/absurd things I love to draw.”

Like castles of cake!

25 percent of the sales of the winning shirt go to the American Cancer Society.