Relay for Life Speech
Matthew J. Terry
Updated: June 23, 2001 at 7:25 am

Looking around, I am overwhelmed by you, caring so much to donate your time and resources for us. You can only imagine what it is like when the doctor tells you that you have cancer…

We survivors have a saying that if you survive just 5 minutes after the doctor tells you that you have cancer then you are indeed a “survivor.” The puzzled questions and emotions that you get following your diagnosis are incredible and inevitably, a brain full  survivors here today can share with me some of the same puzzling thoughts and questions.

When I got my diagnosis, I spent the first few weeks trying to envision how my life would change. I think that my biggest concerns at 15 was how am I going to fit in at school without hair, are my teachers going to cut me any slack, just how sick is this chemotherapy going to make me?

When I went to my doctor with these puzzling questions she sent me to the patient resource center at my local hospital. Just about every hospital has one of these libraries filled with pamphlets and books about various diseases. I have to say that for me the information in these books was completely useless. How was reading about a malignant pericardiac mediastimum going to make me feel more comfortable with loosing my hair?

My friends were just as hopeless in helping me feel comfortable with my disease. After my diagnosis, I can remember just how hard it was for me to relate to my classmates. While they were going off to formal dances and basketball games, I was lying at in bed waiting for anti-nausea medication to kick in. When I was in treatment I felt alone and abandoned. Although a few of the kids from my school came to see me in the hospital, dropped notes in the mail, and called me on the telephone, I still had no interest in keeping up our friendship. From my point of view, they didn’t have any clue what it was like to have Cancer, and that made it hard for me to be their friend.

I knew that my fears and anxieties were not completely unique, and there had to be people out there who could share similar experiences. The hospital libraries as well as my friends were completely hopeless in helping me answer my questions and feel more comfortable with my illness. I guess what I was really looking for was real human answers from survivors.

In those months that I so drastically needed answers and support, I turned to the Internet. I set up a web site with my story, hoping that the survivors would come to me. Only after a few short weeks I met several teenagers who could share in my experiences, and I received an incredible amount of strength from their guidance and support.

A survivor I met once told me, the world treats you as if once you have cancer, you have one foot in the grave. But I know that there are eight million cancers survivors on this earth that can tell you that this just isn’t the case. It was survivors that helped me realize just how much hope is really there. It is survivors that have helped me to realize that through our strength can put an end to this horrible disease. And it was survivors that taught me not to surrender my life, and that all the strength that I need to survive all comes from right here inside of me.

In the past year I have expanded my web site into an online support magazine for Hodgkin’s disease patients and their families. My web site, CureHodgkins.com, provides an online alternative to scientific clinical sites that ignore the human side of cancer. Stories and columns by survivors help me to spread a message of survivorship. I try to empower the hundreds of patients and families from over 53 countries that log on every week to CureHodgkins.com to take a positive approach to treatment and living with lymphoma.

For more than two years now I have been fighting Hodgkin’s disease. I have met hundreds of families faced with the hardship and sadness of this very tragic illness. Undoubtedly, I have been deeply moved by the people I have met with the same fears and anxieties as well as hope and anticipation for the future.

As I am sure all of you can share with me, I feel that too many people have suffered this very tragic disease. Although we are undoubtedly moving in the right direction, if this generation is going to see a better promise for the future, I feel that we as a community must crusade for more supportive communication, new treatments, and improved quality of life.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your willingness to contribute in making a difference in the lives of others. I know that someday during those 5 minutes that a person is told that they have cancer, they will also be told that there is a cure because of the efforts of people like you. On behalf of the American Cancer Society and our country's more than 8 million survivors, I welcome you to the Relay for Life, a celebration of Survivorship.