Livestrong Young Adult Alliance

New Friends-Same Passion

What a great meeting. A group over 100 assembled at the Annual Young Adult Alliance on November 12th -14th to share collective experience to advance Young Adult oncology. The conference started a day early for me as I had an opportunity to meet with some folks from the LAF and share some best practices and brainstorm about the year to come. I also had the chance to catch up with a friend who now works for the LAF. Small world! We had a great time and were also able to share ideas and inspirational stories.

Topics included Resource Sharing, Young Adult Clinical Trials, Follow up Care, New Forms of Media, Standards of Care and Awareness.

Partnerships and Collaboration were some of the key themes that were my take-aways from the meeting. Some great relationships were formed and wonderful and powerful ideas and plans for 2009. There is much momentum in the cancer community and it is our charge to act united and efficiently as we all focus on our fulfilling our Missions in the year to come. New task forces were formed and strong initiatives were structured. Our challenge now is to make sure that we keep our focus and act collectively unified so that we will have great success stories to share at next year’s meeting. These are truly special people. All having made a commitment to supporting the cancer movement. Everyone has committed in different ways, but share the same passion and determination in their organizations mission. I have never met more passionate people than I did at this meeting. It is cliché, but it was truly inspirational.

We had a great key note address from Doug Ulman, President of the Armstrong Foundation as well as a being able to welcome Eric Shanteau, a member of the US Olympic swim team and cancer survivor, to the LYAA team. Eric shared his story with all of us and he was able to mesmerize the crowd of his story and his courageous and patriotic decisions. WOW!

A great group and a powerful ALLIANCE!

LIVESTRONG

Brian
UCF Staff

Why I Fight

I am one of the “newbie’s” here at UCF and I wanted to post on our new blog. I just finished a “project” entitled “Why We Fight” with an unbelievable person and new friend. She approached me to help on this project and had an amazing and REAL perspective which I hope I will never have. To quote my friend “Cancer Sucks”! I have been struggling to figure out how to explain why I fight for the last 2 days, so bear with me. We all have different definitions of “fight”. My definition of fight is still a work in progress because the meaning of this term has evolved in front of me in the last few weeks.

I am very lucky to have met some of the most unbelievable, caring and passionate people in the past few weeks in my new endeavor. People who have dedicated their lives to “fighting”. Everyone having different reasons for fighting. Some fight for their mothers, their daughters, their sisters, their daughter’s friends, themselves, and some for their own lives! Each fight is different, but similar in some ways. We all fight to WIN. We each pick a specific battle, weather it is raising awareness for our cause, or connecting patients and families in need, or supporting a patient on the other end of the phone who needs to talk to someone, or writing a grant so we can continue to support, or listening to a friend who is having a “bad” day, or making sure we have 400 people in place to “Screw Cancer” in October. We all have tasks to focus on.

We all pick battles and fight as best we can in hope that we can affect the outcome of this War on Cancer. The desired outcome is clear but the path ahead is not. What can we do to help? Wouldn’t it be great if Cancer was just part of some History lesson soon and didn’t pose a threat to anyone!

So I ask you one favor. After reading this, sit back and close your eyes. Think about those you know that have battled or are currently battling Cancer. I know you all know someone and most likely more people than you would like to admit. This is Why I FIGHT! Feel free to joint in! I know we can work great as a TEAM!

Brian
Marketing and Resource Development Specialist