It might be hard to believe, but none of my immediate family on one side has never had cancer. That side of my family I never met and so I knew my grandparents died of a hearth malfunction and old age.

But on the other side my Grandmother had Breast Cancer that was the cause of her death, and my Grandfather had a tumor in his brain. I Was too young to really remember my grandmother on that side, she didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak her native tongue, what I knew was she made wonderful pastry, she loved to watch Xena and she used a lot of garlic in her cooking. My grandfather was another story he lasted longer and was actually murdered – the cancer tumor in his brain would have killed him, but no the care taker who thought he had a lot of money did. I knew my grandfather until I was thirteen. Around that age two years before I had been diagnosed with a deadly disease and a disability. I was told at a very young age that at 15 I was going to die.

By the way I didn’t. When forced with mortality in such a young age, it really alters your idea of life and death I never felt bad for my grandparents dying of cancer, and the term cancer in my own life grew to be very synonymous with my own disease. I wasn’t afraid anymore nor in Canada at least I didn’t pity anyone who had cancer. Cancer patients had a chance. I was just told I was going to die and I didn’t have a choice. I won’t tell anyone what I have but Death the chance of just not waking up one day is still very real.

My own mother went into Microbiology to study cancer and I grew up trying to oppose it. I was an academic rebel I didn’t want to do anything typical for a long time probably because death just is my best friend these days.

I’ve actually become a successful (not like money successful in anyway HAH!) successful Environmental Scientist. My supervisor calls my program “Soil Organic engineering.” we could call ourselves engineers some days. But we’re not anything like engineers, and the only thing we will save is lives before they get Cancer. I tried to go to medical school as my mother wanted me to. I did for 2 years I was in an intensive program and I found I wasn’t interested in the live body, and not recently dead bodies either. I quit and I moved on to the arts kid, and I didn’t do well there. And then I took up some environmental Sciences.

I  know how hard it is to be a researcher every day. It’s not sunshine and roses and it’s hard to get funding and companies want to get in on your work if you will have their opinion in the paper. People pay you off sometimes. OR your institution makes conditionals (I lived through this one recently). All in all I will not be curing Cancer.

What I can do is to support it, and perhaps it’s harsh that I’m not attempting to cure cancer because someone in my family died and mostly for scientific process, but we all have our own ways of doing things. Sometimes I think it’d be easier if I just suffered through anatomy, but I didn’t and it’d make much more sense in donating money to Relay than going back and wasting 40k to 80k trying to get my doctorate in medicine, only 1/8th of that usually goes to research (fun facts).

Maybe what I study will benefit cancer sometime I mean it could be. But I’m not wired to solve cancer. I’m wired to protect and rejuvenate soil from conventional farming.

That is why I relay.

Credits:

Head Dress: .a. Arius -TIARA- RARE
Horns: :[P]:- Trinket Horns :// Full
Hair: Moon. Hair // Sparrow
Shoulders: .aisling. Meave -Collar-
Cuirass: [LAB737] Dragoon Cuirass
Belt: PFC~NinjaStuffs – Ninjutsu belt
Skirt: Pure Nature Skirt – Purple Maitryea @ Fantasy Faire
Ankles: PFC~Hermes’ wings