The diagnosis of cancer can be a sudden and devastating blow — especially when it comes at such a young age and to such a healthy, active individual.
As the Associated Press reports, Ohio State freshman pitcher Zach Farmer had been feeling sick for about a week before he went to see the team doctor. He thought he had mononucleosis, but instead, a blood test found abnormalities in his blood. His diagnosis? Acute myeloid leukemia. As a result, the young man is missing the remainder of the baseball season as he undergoes treatment.
However, less than two weeks after the announcement, Zach’s team stepped up in the most incredible way in order to get their fellow Buckeye back on the mound.
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Led by senior captain Tim Wetzel, 37 players, two coaches, and other officials signed up to have their bone marrow tested in an effort to find a match for Zach — just in case a transplant is ever needed, the Columbus Dispatch reports.
“As soon as we learned Zach’s diagnosis, I told Coach about this,” Wetzel (who’s been on the national bone marrow registry for 18 months) told the Dispatch. “Everyone was on board with this. This puts the game of baseball into perspective. This is more about the game. Winning and losing is important, but right now Zach is in a battle for his life. We’re trying to help get him through this.”
On their day off from baseball practice, the team went to the doctor’s office to have their cheeks swabbed and to fill out the appropriate forms for the national Be the Match bone marrow registry.
As Yahoo! Sports notes, even if no team member is a compatible match for Zach, just by being on the national bone marrow program means that they could potentially help someone else in the country who’s fighting the disease.
ALSO: The Spirit of This Amazing College Student Lives On After Her Life Is Cut Short
According to the Dispatch, Farmer has undergone his first round of chemotherapy at The Ohio State James Cancer Hospital; if he goes into remission, he will become eligible for a potentially game-changing bone-marrow transplant.
Tag: cancer
7 Summer Supercamps You’ll Wish Were Around When You Were a Kid
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Could 3-D Printing Help Find A Cure For Cancer?
Imagine if you had a cancerous tumor, and your doctor could determine the best course of treatment by printing a three-dimensional (3-D) replica of the mass. You’d probably sign up immediately, right?
Thanks to researchers at Drexel University in Philadelphia this could soon be a possibility.
Dr. Wei Sun and his staff have discovered new research on expediting the process of testing cancer drugs through the use of 3-D printers. The technology means doctors can print a living tumor (or a mixture of cancerous and healthy biomaterial) at such high resolution that the cells can be examined with extreme precision, according to Fast Company.
Typically, the drawn-out process requires testing drugs on cancer cells in a Petri dish, then on 3-D tumors in animals and — with a comprehensive record of trials — eventually on humans. But this process is far from ideal. Why? First off, what works in two-dimensional form may not work in 3-D. Not to mention that what works on animals may not always work on humans. Formulas can fail when switching test subjects, which is why developing cancer drugs can be such a costly venture, according to Sun.
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“Doctors want to be able to print tissue, to make organ on the cheap,” Dr. Sun said. “This kind of technology is what will make that happen. In 10 years, every lab and hospital will have a 3-D printing machine that can print living cells.”
By using 3-D printing technology, doctors can speed up the process of drug development but also potentially use it to personalize cancer treatment. The accuracy to print out multi-shaped tumors of different sizes means that a doctor can determine what drugs would work the best by simulating it with the printed version.
With cancer being such a costly and widespread disease, Sun’s venture has the potential to revolutionize treatment and save countless lives.
A Dying Grandmother Takes One Last Stroll With the Help of This Incredible Invention
Most people think of virtual reality as video games. But as the touching video below shows, virtual reality can also be a useful tool to help improve the quality of someone’s life.
As The Rift Arcade reports, video game artist Priscilla Firstenberg sent a note to Oculus VR, the Irvine, California-based developers behind the Oculus Rift, to help fulfill her terminally ill grandmother’s wish to go outside again. A virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift is the company’s first product and is currently in development after a successful Kickstarter campaign.
For Priscilla’s cancer-stricken grandmother, Roberta, the 3D headset gave her the chance to stroll along a sunny Tuscan village right from her own home. Her reactions are nothing short of amazing—she describes touching butterflies, hearing the sounds of the beach and seagulls, and looking at all the beautiful colors.
“It’s just like dropping into a mirage, dropping straight down into a bubble of new life. It’s beautiful,” she says in the video.
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But it was the simple action of walking up the stairs that Roberta found the most awe-inspiring. “Her favorite part was just being able to walk up and down the stairs again of the villa in the Tuscany demo,” Priscilla told The Rift Arcade. “I guess we take a lot of things for granted.”
Using the Oculus Rift’s version of Google Street View, Roberta was even able to take a virtual stroll and see an old snap of herself standing with her beloved pet dog.
Unfortunately, about four weeks after her first use of the Oculus, Roberta’s condition took a turn for the worse and she passed away. However, Roberta’s story is a reminder of the incredible possibilities of virtual reality, especially beyond entertainment purposes and video gaming.
As she says in the video, virtual reality can be a real form of therapy: “You can be in pain like I have pain but somehow when you see a blue butterfly reach out to kiss you…it makes you realize that we all are part of this world and this world is very precious to us.”
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There’s More Than Meets the Eye to This Beautiful Photograph
A photo of three adorable little girls from Oklahoma is touching countless lives. And the story behind the photograph will really tug at your heartstrings.
As KOCO reports, Scantling Photography and Goodger Photography found the girls — each battling a different type of cancer — on Facebook and brought them in for a photo shoot. The result is a moving image of three angelic girls sharing a special moment together with the fitting caption, “Sometimes strength comes in knowing that you are not alone.”
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“I just wanted something that showed the strength and the bond and that they weren’t alone,” photographer Lora Scantling told the television station.
According to their respective social media pages, three-year-old Rylie has stage 5 kidney cancer; six-year-old Rheann is battling a rare form brain cancer called mucoid spindle sarcoma; and four-year-old Ainsley has acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
The picture has since gone viral, drawing thousands of comments, likes and shares. “The photo literally made me cry,” one commenter wrote on Rheann’s page. “Too often we take so many things for granted. The picture of these girls is very humbling to me. Tonight, I will hug my sons a little tighter, snuggle them a little longer, and pray for them a little harder.”
Watch the video below to learn more about the girls and their fight.
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A Dying Dad Creates a Special Moment With His Tween Daughter
Before you read any further, you might want to grab a box of tissues.
Walking down the aisle at your wedding with your dad is a precious moment. And it’s one that 11-year-old Josie Zetz won’t be able to have — but she will always have a special memory of her dad Jim by her side.
Diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, the 62-year-old California dad will likely fall victim to the disease before he’s able to watch his young daughter grow up and get married. But as the Huffington Post reports, after local photographer Lindsey Villatoro heard about the family’s heartbreaking story, she was inspired to organize an incredible surprise for Josie’s birthday: An opportunity for Jim to walk his daughter down the aisle knowing he wouldn’t be there on her big day.
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Villatoro set up a fundraising page on her website and the community responded with everything needed to pull off the special day. Josie received a fancy dress from LA Fashion Week and dad Jim got a dapper suit. The event, held in the family’s backyard of their Murrieta, Calif., home, was set up with caterers, flowers and food — all complimentary. The father was even able to give his daughter a promise ring that he placed on her index finger after a pastor pronounced them “Daddy and Daughter.”
“Josie you will forever have a video of you and your dad walking you down the aisle to play at your wedding in years to come as if he was physically there,” Villatoro wrote in her video slideshow of the ceremony.
These High School Students Came Together to Help Their Seriously Ill Math Teacher
Between the fancy dresses and tuxedos, limo rides, and the actual event tickets, attending prom can be quite a costly affair. But the expense of the evening didn’t stop the students of Pine Ridge High School in Deltona, Florida, from wanting to help a much-loved teacher.
These class act teens donated not only a portion of their prom funds, but also they raised thousands of dollars to help Charlie Lundell, the popular math-rapping teacher battle lung and liver cancer. (A Dancing with the Teachers was one such fundraising event.) As FOX affiliate WOFL reports, the longtime math and college readiness teacher had to leave his position to undergo his third round of chemotherapy and radiation. On top of his rising medical costs, he and his wife are expecting twins, which is bound to increase the financial burden on them even more.
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“He really cares about helping people learn and really wants us to be our full potential,” said junior class president Katie Buday. “It’s one of the great teachers out there.”
Yahoo! News reports that another school teacher is also very ill and currently in the hospital, and so now students are fundraising for both educators. Despite the tragic situation, students said that their efforts have raised school spirits to an all-time high.
How One Skeptical Researcher Found an Unexpected Cause of Cancer
Skepticism might seem like an enemy of innovation, but when it comes to research, sometimes it’s the key. Dr. Johanna Joyce grew up in Ireland, earned her PhD at Cambridge, and used her “Irish skepticism” to create a major paradigm shift in cancer research at UC San Francisco and Memorial Sloan-Kettering. When everyone else was working to fight cancer by attacking the cancer cells themselves, they dismissed the white blood cells that surround tumors as “harmless garbage trucks.” But Joyce doubted how harmless they might be, and started critical studies in her lab to find out if attacking the white blood cells could treat the most common and most deadly forms of cancer. Joyce’s groundbreaking research turned into clinical trials that are attracting others to investigate similar methods. This bit of skepticism might just mark a major step toward curing cancer.
Improving Americans’ Health Begins with These Three Numbers
San Diego County’s Director of Health and Human Services, Nick Macchione, has spent the last five years working to turn around the region’s health problems. Disappointed with the results or pre-existing programs, he responded by bringing together a unique, diverse group of experts to transform the health conditions of communities all around the county. The aggressive ten-year plan, Live Well San Diego!, is based on the 3-4-50 public health principle. 3-4-50 represents the three major behaviors (low-quality diets, physical inactivity, and smoking) that lead to four chronic diseases (cancer, heart disease and stroke, diabetes, and lung diseases), accounting for 50% of deaths worldwide. (San Diego’s rate was even higher at 57%). Live Well San Diego! is built to encourage healthy choices in the community and create policy and environmental changes in government as well. The holistic plan uses outreach to churches, businesses and schools to change the culture from within. “Sometimes simple things have great impact,” says Macchione.
How One Statistician Helped Get Badly Needed Cancer Drugs to Market
Don Berry, a biostatician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, was frustrated about the potentially decade-long process to test breast cancer drugs and bring them to market. The lengthy and costly trials dissuade some drug manufacturers from even trying to develop certain drugs. So Berry, in partnership with researchers at the National Cancer Institute, the FDA, and drug companies, devised a way to more quickly detect which drugs were working and which weren’t by testing them on a small group of women and statistically analyzing the results as soon as they started to come in, rather than waiting for the studies to conclude before examining results. The development of one drug showing promise in treating a difficult form of breast cancer has already been expedited with this technique, and has moved to the FDA’s final-phase testing. When it comes to saving lives, the faster, the better.