In my work at Fred Hutch I collect and manage data on cancer patients. Every day when I come to work, I have to temporarily suspend my empathy for the patients we study and disconnect my emotions or I’d lose my objectivity and quite possibly my mind and never get any work done. The people and their experiences we study become data points living in a database within a virtual world stored inside the computer network. They become statistics that we manipulate and report on to further science. This is a necessary requirement of doing research and getting the work done. Thus, most of the time when I work at Fred Hutch, I live in the abstract world.
Every so often, though, the reality of cancer thrusts me back into the real world like a cold slap across the face. Yesterday, for example, I learned that a friend in her forties who had been battling cancer for a number of years finally succumbed to the disease and died. Aletia wasn’t a close friend but she was someone I knew through our church and the school that my children attended. A real person cut down in her prime by cancer, leaving behind two lovely girls and a loving husband.
Aletia’s death is also a reminder why working in cancer research is so important. Real people get cancer, real people suffer from it, and real people die. Lots and lots of people. From babies to 100-year olds and everyone in between. This is the reality of cancer and the reality of life. RIP, Aletia.
I’m riding Obliteride on August 9th to raise money for cancer research at Fred Hutch. Please consider donating to the cause.
The Whole Geek 