Today is National Cancer Survivors Day, which gives us a special opportunity to celebrate those who have battled this disease and lived to tell about it.
Hats off to all of us!
According to the official National Cancer Survivors Day website, there are more than 32 million cancer survivors worldwide — and close to 16 million in the U.S. This includes everyone who has any history of cancer, from the moment of diagnosis, through treatment and beyond.
We can all take a moment today (and every day) to cheer new treatments that offer us more hope than ever. There is still much more work to do, and some cancers remain heartbreakingly resistant to treatment. But in many cases, the odds are increasingly in our favor.
Celebrating these victories, however, is only part of the goal today. The other piece of National Cancer Survivors Day is raising awareness about the challenges that cancer survivors continue to face even after treatment ends.
“Cancer survivors face ongoing, often long-lasting, hardships because of their disease,” Laura Shipp, spokeswoman for the National Cancer Survivors Day Foundation, said in a press release. “We want to raise awareness of the many challenges of cancer survivorship and advocate for further research, more resources, and increased public awareness to improve the lives of cancer survivors.”
This day’s 30th annual observance is especially poignant in light of the debates taking place right now in our nation’s capital. No matter what your political leanings, you should be concerned about proposed cuts to research dollars and about possible loss of insurance protections for those who have fought diseases like cancer.
The Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect. But it provided very real relief to people who’d had cancer and lived in fear of losing their health insurance, being unable to obtain a policy, or exhausting a lifetime cap on benefits. We must ensure that those working to change federal healthcare law don’t return us to the days when pre-existing conditions could block cancer survivors from health insurance — either because we can’t get coverage at all or because we can’t afford the cost.
Read what the Cancer Leadership Council has said about the most recent version of the American Health Care Act. If you are a cancer survivor, this bill is a scary step back.
So, yes.
Today, we celebrate survival and the progress we’ve made, thanks to effective treatments and access to care. Tomorrow, we must continue to fight — or risk losing very valuable ground.