I don’t have words to tell you how hard a lung cancer diagnosis is, but I will tell you this: the friends we make through lung cancer are silver linings. I’ve met some amazing people and count that an honour and privilege!

We rejoice and celebrate when someone gets good news and we weep together when the news is bad. (Today is one of those hard days: a dear lung cancer friend is in a tough place right now.) About half of all lung cancer patients are diagnosed at stage 4, and many of us get scans every 3 months or less. That’s a lot of emotion at regular intervals!

But it’s not just the lung cancer patients who are silver linings. I’ve connected more deeply with a variety of people, including friends who have drawn closer in support, people affected by other kinds of cancers, caregivers, and all kinds of people who are helping and working towards a cure.

This is going to be a big week-end for me, cheering for some of my silver linings!

Sunday is “The Ride” fundraiser for the Ottawa Hospital, and I plan to go cheer for the cyclists who are riding to raise funds for cancer research, especially for Anna, the “Superhero” researcher who is riding for lung cancer research. She has surpassed her fundraising goal, thanks to generous donors who I’m also cheering for! Thank you! Let me know if you can come join me for some cheering at Tunney’s Pasture around noon this Sunday. I’d love to connect with you there.

Tonight is Stand Up to Cancer’s big show, 8:00pm on just about every TV channel, live from LA. At the LUNGevity Hope Summit in DC in April, we met many amazing people, including Sung Poblete, the President and CEO of Stand Up to Cancer. She listened intently and spoke passionately about collaboration and accelerated research, and what’s not to love about SU2C’s mission to turn every cancer patient into a cancer survivor! No wonder they’ve done so well at bringing celebrities on board! Tonight a show full of celebrities will be Standing Up to Cancer and urging people to give generously to cancer research. All money given in Canada will stay in Canada. I love that Stand Up to Cancer and all those celebrities will be cheering us on tonight. I’m looking forward to watching the show and celebrating the support!

But you know what else I’ll be cheering about? Many of my lung cancer community friends will be sitting in the audience, watching the show live in person!! SU2C was extravagantly generous, offering free tickets at the LUNGevity Hope Summit! I could have gone too, but this year I’ll be hanging out with my family, watching the show from my living room. (I hope you will too!) I’m pretty sure I won’t recognize all the celebrities on stage, but I’m going to be looking out for my lung cancer friends, and you can believe I’ll be cheering loudly whenever I catch a glimpse of any of them!!

Research is making a difference. (There’s still a long way to go.) Research is already starting to improve outcomes for lung cancer patients. Look at me! I’m here because of the grace of God and because of lung cancer research. That’s something to cheer about!

What’s on TV tonight!