Notes from the Desk: Beyond the Relay

Tomorrow evening, hundreds of people will descend on Middlebury for the town’s annual Relay for Life event. It’s a success by any measure, especially when you consider that our relay has raised more than $1 million for the American Cancer Society since a Middlebury student started it seven years ago.

But what’s more impressive is that many of the most successful fundraising teams are made up entirely of students. The highest grossing team to date has 15 seniors who’ve raised more than $9,000. Some are cancer survivors themselves, like Mark Whelan ’10.5. But most do it just for the satisfaction of helping a good cause, which makes that $1 million even more impressive. Apparently busy college students are as dedicated to defeating a silent, deadly and mysterious enemy as they are to defeating organic chemistry and macro theory.

But college students can and should do more in the crusade against cancer, especially considering this alarming fact: 70,000 Americans between the ages of 15 and 40 are diagnosed with cancer every year, and there has been no measurable increase in their survival rate in 35 years, according to The 15-40 Connection (www.15-40.org). While everyone knows that cancer is not just a disease for the elderly, those numbers should be a wake-up call for our generation.

One possible reason that survival rates have not increased is that students who have been healthy for all of their 18 or 21 years start to think they are invincible. While many of us know someone who has been affected by cancer or even fallen victim to it, we have probably all had the thought, “Oh, it won’t happen to me.”

Don’t think that. Remember that the most obvious sign of cancer is often just an ache or other subtle change in your health. Don’t pretend you’re invisible, and take your medical care and cancer screenings seriously. Tell your doctor if you are worried about a noticeable change in your health. Encourage your friends to do the same. Though being aware of your own health seems like a piece of cake, at some point you might find cancer and eradicate it in its early stages, saving your own life and improving the stagnant cancer survival rate among young adults.

Just ask Whelan, whose personal page on Relay for Life’s website explains why he is participating. “I have had my own personal fight with cancer, but I am glad to say that in about a month I will officially be free of cancer for one year,” he writes. “While I have been incredibly lucky and my story is a happy one, there are many who aren’t so lucky. This is my attempt to give back what little I can to a cause that I care about.”

If you are among the more than 500 people who have already spent so much effort raising money for the Middlebury Relay, you deserve congratulations and the gratitude of every cancer survivor. But as Relay participants know, cancer never sleeps, and anyone can get it. Whelan’s successful battle with cancer as a young adult will no doubt inspire people to donate money. It should also inspire us, his peers, to pay attention to our own health.

So remind yourself and others to take aches, pains and other minor but unusual health problems seriously. It could save your life, and that’s worth more than all the fundraising in the world.