When cancer gets personal

I opened my morning paper earlier this week to learn that Kay Yow, the women’s basketball coach for North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., will no longer coach from the sidelines this year. I was reminded, as I have been many times before, how personal cancer feels when it has a face — whether a family member or friend, or someone who lives in the public eye.

When we see the reactions and adjustments by public figures to a life with cancer, we gain insight into the human condition. We realize of course that nobody signs up for this diagnosis, and the brave responses of those in the public view reflect the resilience of the human spirit.

Ms. Yow, the N.C. state basketball coach, continues to battle bravely and tries to minimize the impact that her struggle with cancer will have on her basketball team. She has coached with metastatic breast cancer since 2004, and her quiet battle with the disease has allowed her team’s performance over the last several years, and not her disease, to stay in the spotlight of local sports reporters. Even in this most difficult decision, observers commented that Yow’s timing, on the eve of the ACC basketball schedule, allowed her to step aside at a time that would be least distracting for the team.

I was reminded of Jon Lester, the Boston Red Sox pitcher, who has achieved great success in recent seasons with a World Series win in 2007 and a no-hitter in 2008. Lester, who was diagnosed with anaplastic large cell lymphoma in 2006 and successfully treated, has worked hard to not let cancer define his career narrative. He rarely speaks about the disease, and why should he need to? For him, his early career successes deserve the attention that they gain in their own right.

The heroes in our own lives who have been diagnosed with cancer will likely not be on the front page of the local paper. But the stories of those who are show that while nobody is immune from the disease, the spirit endures in all.