Dr. Ted Young - the surgeon who has come to my family's rescue more than once. He is Chief of General Surgery and one of the best in the world at his profession.

Dr. Young performed a special surgical method on me to better hide the scars from my neck surgery to remove 33 lymph nodes (the McFee Method) (the photo below is of me speaking at this years Terry Fox Run - it's a nice shot of one of my 6-10 inch neck scares 2 years after surgery). As a respected surgeon and friend, I called on him for help a year following treatments to save my sister's life! He rolled out the red carpet at St. Joseph's Hospital for Lizzy. My entire family believes Lizzy and I are still alive because of the special care we received in Hamilton. Dr. Swann, Dr. Scott, Dr. Young, Dr. Hodson, Dr. Browman, Dr. Wong and everyone who helped save my life - THANK YOU!

MY MESSAGE:

As somebody who has struggled to relate to other cancer survivors, likely because I was one, if not the youngest non-smoker in the world to be afflicted with an aggressive smoker's cancer, I realized I was not alone...

When you think of cancer, you think of an often fatal disease. What if I told you there were 1000+ different diseases under the umbrella term of cancer; What if I told you there were 303 DIFFERENT chemotherapy drugs currently on the market and all of them did DIFFERENT things, caused different side-effects and were administered to patients with the same affliction often DIFFERENTLY; What if I told you there were a handful of different types of radiation treatments and each cause different side effects; What if I told you the duration of common radiation treatments and the area of the body they are radiating dictates the symptoms.... Would you be surprised?

My message - the treatment options for cancer are exponential! NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON EXPERIENCES IT IN THE SAME WAY, PHYSICALLY OR EMOTIONALLY, regardless of whether or not the clinically suffer from an identical form of cancer.

Cancers are not something to be scared of, but something to understand. Don't get me wrong, you don't want a cancer - but as the old adage goes, "knowledge is power". If you or a loved one is faced with any one of the MANY forms of cancer anytime soon, please learn as much as possible and ADVOCATE for yourself or your loved one. Patient advocacy is so crucial to receiving the best possible care.

Please take my message to heart. Learn as much as possible about cancer and try to build an understanding about how unique it is to each person afflicted with it. Understand that you have a 50% chance of battling one of the MANY diseases that fall under the cancer umbrella before you die, but in understanding that also know the majority who are diagnosed with cancer, battle it and live.

Do not be afraid of the C-word. It is unfortunately here to stay and we should all unite to understand it.

By uniting in our efforts - by attempting to understand it, I am optimistic we will find a way to eradicate cancers sooner than if we just left it up to a select few!