Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Too Much Cancer

Many of you may remember that my sister, Dr. Mom, successfully battled breast cancer two years ago. It was strange that two of her labmates also battled cancer. Imagine - three people in their 30's, all former labmates, coming down with cancer at nearly the same time. Doesn't this stink of environmental cues?

And then, within the course of a week, I found out that my own labmate has cancer as does my classmate. My labmate and I worked in the same room, around the same chemicals and what not. My classmate worked on the same floor. It just makes me wonder if we really know and understand the risks of the materials we are working with. I also question if my RA arose from environmental stimuli. It is an autoimmune disease, after all. I suppose I will never know.

It is awful that young people - brilliant scientists - have to suffer through cancer. I hope that they will recover like my sister did. I hope that they can continue their careers and their lives, and live it to the fullest.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, that is horrible.

Anthea said...

Wow...that's awful. I'd be wondering like you whether its environmental causes too.

Anonymous said...

Hi Janus Professor-

I stumbled on your blog via your sister's content at Mommy Scientist. I read her stuff throughout my early PhD (I'm almost done now) but I had gradually stopped reading after she hadn't posted in so long. Every so often I checked in, but nothing new until I say you had mentioned her recovery in this post.

Two years of silence meant I worried about her, and thought perhaps things had turned out for the worst (maybe strange how sad I was, for a person I'd never met, in another country), and I just wanted to post here to let you know what a relief it was to see you mention her! If it's not too strange, please let her know that one of her readers is relieved to know she's ok!

Thanks :)