consano blog

4-year Cancerversary

For those of you keeping track, yesterday was my four-year "cancerversary." Four years since I heard the words, "You have cancer." Four years. In some ways it seems like forever ago and in other ways it feels like yesterday. While my mastectomy scars have faded with time, cancer has certainly left an indelible mark on me. I try to find the joy in the little moments. I try not to jump to the immediate conclusion that "it's back" at even the smallest ache or pain. I try to reflect on the many ways that I have been so fortunate in my cancer experience. But sometimes I still get really mad. Why did this happen to me? Why do so many people I know have to deal with this? Why does this bring so much pain and suffering to the people I love? Why do my daughters at the age of 7 and 9 know so much about cancer and illness? It's not fair.

My Honor Fund

After seeing so many donations coming into projects in honor and in memory of loved ones, we knew that we needed a better tool to enable people to share their stories and rally their communities to directly support medical research that matters to them. We thought of this idea as a great first step toward patient-driven research. So at our 2014 Consano event, we asked our community to raise their paddles to support this idea: Honor Funds. And, to no surprise given the generosity of our amazing community, we quickly raised the money required to design and build this Honor Fund platform.

So it was surreal this past Friday, at our 2015 Consano PDX event, to ask our community (many of whom had attended last year's event), to again raise their paddles, this time to support my Honor Fund, "Turning (Bad) Lemons Into Lemonade." To recap, we used the tool funded last year, to raise $57,000, which fully funded my Honor Fund this year, which will help to keep the Consano platform running so we can fund more medical research (with 100% of each donation going exactly where each project donor decides!) for years to come. As I stood on the stage, soaking in the generosity and kindness of our community, I couldn't help but look around to see if Keanu Reeves was somewhere in the audience, Matrix style!