There has been quite a lot of breaking cancer news over the course of this winter break. Lance Armstrong has cozied up next to Oprah to discuss his lies, The Huffington Post has created the Generation Why page on their site, Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o is “catfished” by an imaginary leukemic girlfriend, and The Fault in our Stars continues to thrill millions of readers. I have to ask: how is all of this watered down mass media attention affecting those diagnosed with cancer in their own living rooms? I can’t speak for each and every person in America or across the globe for that matter, but I can speak for myself. Every time I am watching television and the word cancer is uttered by some newsperson or television host, I cringe a little bit. I live with the disease I had every day. I still relive the memories, tastes, and sounds of cancer. It would be nice if, even for a day, I could zone out in front of the television and forget my reality for a few hours like many Americans do. But, cancer is all over now and whenever it is spoken of I experience a jolt back to reality. Sometimes all I do is shake it off and zone it out. Other times it reminds me that life is too short to be sitting in front of the television set watching a repeat marathon of Snapped on the Oxygen network.

Aside from my personal issues with cancer as a marketing tool, the kind of news that has recently qualified as news casts a dim light on the world of cancer. For example, Lance Armstrong’s admission that he used performance enhancing drugs devastates me personally. A man that has done so much for the “cancer community” especially for young adults with cancer, holds responsibility as a public figure to live up to and uphold a respectable way of life. My issue with Armstrong is not the effect that his steroid use had on his placement in the Tour de France tournaments. My issue with him is his use of added medications and blood transfusions after a life of cancer. It damages his Livestrong foundation that I so desperately needed when I was first diagnosed. Armstrong’s own help manual for his personally named organization advocates for being in charge of one’s own health plan and healthy living. His cocktail like mix of performance enhancing drugs is a far cry from the healthy life Livestrong advocates for. It infuriates me personally that he willingly participated in the acceptance of extra blood transfusions. While hospitalized, I refused many offers of blood transfusions even though my body needed them pretty badly. I let my body verge on the borderline of danger for the sake of the image of a future body I had in my mind. The more blood transfusions one receives, the higher risk there is of infection and the more pressure and damage can be done to the liver. I tried my best to minimize future risk by postponing what my body craved. What is worse, however, is the shortage of blood there is in blood banks. It is almost irrelevant where Armstrong got his blood from. The blood used to enhance Armstrong’s cycling could have gone to someone that truly needed it. I have been on the shortage side of the blood banks. I am not an extremely rare blood type but I am rare enough. My blood type was not easily accessible. A- blood types have a high demand and low deposits. The blood Armstrong gluttonously wasted makes him a detestable figure for the cancer community. The Armstrong organization, as much as it has helped cancer patients, is based on lies and the face of the organization is now a disgrace.

The Generation Why section of the Huffington Post is a huge leap for the young adult cancer community. It is a page where a variety of cancer patients blog, much like I do, about surviving with a cancer diagnosis. As inspiring and innovative as this page is, I feel as if it is not updated enough. It is hard to keep up with posts when doctor appointments, treatments, and lethargy set in. However, there are at least a half dozen bloggers on the site and writers only post about once a month. The issues are relevant and interesting but I wish there was more material on the site. Sometimes it makes me wonder if there really is enough material for the young adults with cancer to even produce for us.

Manti Te’o’s story has saturated the media for days now. It is a similar story to one told many times before—person fakes cancer (in this case leukemia) to garner some sort of personal gain. I was irate when I heard this story for the first time. It was so…. unfair. Not to Te’o for being gullible enough to fall into this story (if he really did) or to the perpetrator and pretend leukemic girlfriend but to me and other people like me. I do not get the luxury of lying about this disease. I do not get the luxury to abuse my story for personal gain. It is morally disgusting and inconceivable that a person has the ability to lie so blatantly and use a very serious and deadly illness to possibly get football tickets? It is horrible and when I hear this story or others like it I have to turn off the television because someone out there is wishing they had the ability to lie about having cancer. The college and Te’o should be held accountable if knowledge and willing participation advanced this lie. The man who began this “scandal” deserves whatever retribution possible for all the cancer patients out there.