Purple Facebook posts and fundraising campaigns went viral today, a day that affects too many: World Cancer Day.
The day has been commemorated by Chevrolet’s one dollar to the American Cancer Society for every purple profile picture, by news source tweets, by personal testimonies. It’s devastating to scroll down a newsfeed and know so many people affected by one disease. It’s depressing to find solace in the notion that you and your experience aren’t alone, that other people went through similar events.
World Cancer Day opens the doors for people to see the strikingly powerful impact the disease has on frankly, too many people. There may be a beauty in knowing that hundreds of my friends have purple profile pictures to support a worthy cause, but what drove them to do so is painful to comprehend; parents, uncles, aunts, siblings- battling cancer, battled cancer, lost to cancer. Commemorating Facebook posts, graves with flowers, funds in their name. These honorable tributes based off memories are terrible to endure.
February Fourth brought to the Internet a cause that hurts too many, that touches too many; a disease that results in too many hospital trips, too many chemotherapy sessions, too many tears. Cancer sucks. I can’t write and advocate for change. I can’t blog and say, “we must find a cure!” We must, but I won’t be the one to do so. I won’t be the one to move everyone to the lab to discover how some rare rainforest flower can stop every form of cancer. It will be too many years until science and medicine can fix what my mom, your family member, face every day.
Until then, support the cause in the only way you can. Change your profile picture purple. One dollar-one hundred pennies- it isn’t enough for an individual cure, but it can work to finding one.
Mistry Solved 