Tonight was the perfect bookend to an amazing, breath-taking and fulfilling season of cancer advocacy.
I got to spend time with my buddy Lewis tonight. He came to Lights of Hope, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s signature event, held annually at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Accompanying him were his friends Matthew and Jeff, two great guys who, after I explained my volunteer work with ACS CAN and what Lights of Hope is all about, gave me their cards and offered to help in any way they can. Then we went off to The Hamilton for a few rounds of beer.
That wasn’t the bookend, but it would have been enough. So, let me give you a bit of background.
When we officially launched the Lights of Hope fundraising campaign by debuting the video in which I tell my story at the State Lead Ambassador Summit in May, I shared the story of Lewis and his sister, Sharon, who lost her life to aggressive late-stage metastatic colon cancer.
In the summer of 2018, they came to Knoxville on a Hail Mary mission to save Sharon’s life. Her treatment had stopped working, and they were hoping the doctor they were seeing at the Cancer Institute at the University of Tennessee Medical Center would have new options, perhaps a clinical trial or two they could try.
Lewis and I had breakfast together, and then he took me to meet Sharon. She and I got along famously, laughing about the trials of treatment and life with a colostomy bag. Her bright laughter belied the pain he was in, and her smile lit up the room.
I saw that same smile on Lewis’s face when we talked about his late sister tonight. Matt and Jeff went home and to catch a train, respectively, so it was just the two of us, reminiscing about that brief meeting with Sharon.
He told me how meeting Sharon changed her life. Likewise, it changed mine.
It’s been just over a year since Sharon passed. I carried her story to Lights of Hope last year, and her story has been a driving force behind my advocacy work since then.
Above all, we talked about hope. Hope that cancer will one day disappear. If we can cure Hepatitis C and make the AIDS virus undetectable with medication, can the day be far off where we cancer is cured or, at the very least, a chronic and not catastrophic illness?
That hope propels me. Sharon’s story feeds that hope. The hope that there will be a day when no one has to hear the words, “you have cancer.”
Spending the day on Capitol Hill sharing my cancer story with lawmakers and their staff members who were incredibly receptive to our asks, hearing the powerful stories of my fellow Tennessee advocates, and then seeing the stories of 40,000 people at Lights of Hope — all of that feeds my hope.
I pray for and work for that day. As I told my Congressman, Rep. Tim Burchett, whom I’ve known for many years, I really am on a mission from God. As long as this is my mission, there will be hope.
May hope anchor all of us in our work.
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