Cancer Stories

Last week, the Cancer Community @ Illinois in partnership with Carle Cancer Center announced a new graduate program in cancer research. The Cancer Scholars for Translational and Applied Research (C*STAR) graduate educational program is currently accepting applicants and will begin in the fall.

The C*STAR program will give funding for six existing University of Illinois graduate students to work on a specific cancer research project for up to three years alongside a faculty member from the Cancer Community @ Illinois and a clinician mentor from Carle. The students and projects chosen will be announced in early July. 

On Thursday night on WILL-TV doctors, families and cancer survivors came together in the WILL studio for a half-hour community conversation: Diagnoses & Decisions, hosted by Illinois Public Radio’s Amanda Vinicky.

For two long-time friends from central Illinois, a breast cancer diagnosis in May, 2014 gave them the opportunity to take on new roles within their relationship. 

University of Illinois post-doctoral student, Matthew MacDonough made a life changing decision at fifteen to pursue a career in cancer research, after losing his grandfather to prostate cancer.

Matthew said at the time he really didn’t understand what cancer was, but since been determined to learn more about the disease that took his loved one.

It’s been forty years since Tod Waldron was a freshman at the U of I and diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He says the hardest part was talking about his cancer with his girlfriend (now wife), Betsi and his parents.

“I was pretty nonchalant about it at the time, because I just didn’t know enough,” said Tod, “but my parents were from a generation that didn’t discuss cancer.

It's been just over a year since Brenda O’Brien brought her fiancé Pete Biondo to the emergency room at Mercy hospital in St. Louis. She thought he had a tooth infection. But it turned out to be something far more serious.

“They saw a tumor,” she said. “The next day they went in and did a biopsy of it, and they told us that it was anaplastic astrocytoma.”

A terminal form of brain cancer.

It’s been three months since TV news anchor Dave Benton told viewers that his brain cancer was back, and doctors told him he had months to live.  In the time he has, he says his goal is to live life to the fullest.