What's the Best Part of National Cancer Survivors Day?

To celebrate National Cancer Survivors Day (June 7), I'm sharing a recent picture of me with Linnea Olson, a sister metastatic lung cancer patient and one of the bloggers (Outliving Lung Cancer) who inspired me to become a lung cancer blogger and advocate. She and I are both alive thanks to research and clinical trials. As Linnea phrased it on Twitter, "Medical research has our backs! Here's to fourteen more (and beyond) years!"

The community of lung cancer patients and caregivers, combined with family and friends, keeps me going despite the roller coaster of scans, progressions, side effects, and emotions that are an integral part of living with metastatic cancer. Mostly, I connect with them online. Meeting them in real life at conferences, fundraisers, advocacy meetings and social gatherings feels like coming home. We can talk for hours about matters great and small — whether it be the fear of progression or the perfect ice cream flavor.

Best wishes for a great day to my many patient friends in the lung cancer community — both on and off social media — and in other cancer communities as well. Here's to hoping all cancers will soon become either curable, or treatable as chronic illnesses.

It's also Chocolate Ice Cream Day. Coincidence? I think not!

[Image credit: LUNGevity (taken at the HOPE Summit May 1, 2015)]