Foot soldiers

Photos by Andrew Renneisen (via The Daily Orange)

Part 3 of 3: Every year, the Syracuse community gathers in the Carrier Dome to celebrate cancer survivors, honor loved ones lost to the disease and fight back to end cancer. Part Three of this series acknowledges those who fight for the cure.

The abnormal cells grow uncontrollably. They first arrive innocently enough, manifesting themselves as an unusual lump barely worth mentioning. Or a cough that lasts a little too long. Or a bruise that, for some reason, just hasn’t gone away.

The cells spread, invading other parts of the body, destroying tissues in their way. They might travel through a lymph or hide in a white blood cell. Eventually, they announce themselves by ravaging the body they’ve invaded. Too often, they end a life.

Not everyone is willing to sit back and watch.

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In memoriam

Part 2 of 3: Every year, the Syracuse community gathers in the Carrier Dome to celebrate cancer survivors, honor loved ones lost to the disease and fight back to end cancer. Part Two of this series explores the ways in which SU honors, mourns and remembers the fallen.

Typically, one mourns alone. Behind closed doors and under covers, you can hide the raw grief that demands release. The tears that escape honor your grandmother, your great aunt, your father, your loveable Rottweiler, your best friend.

One night of the year in the Carrier Dome, members of the Syracuse community grieve together. They openly share their vulnerability in a ceremony of remembrance for their lost loved ones. No closed doors or covers are needed.

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Day by day

Photo courtesy of Haley Buchan

Part 1 of 3: Every year, the Syracuse community gathers in the Carrier Dome to celebrate cancer survivors, honor loved ones lost to the disease and fight to end cancer. Part One of this series serves to celebrate one of SU’s own survivors.

There’s a feeling that grows as you near the light at the end of the tunnel. The sigh of relief you know will escape your overwhelmed body when you reach your journey’s promising end. “Everything’s going to be OK,” it whispers.

Heather Buchan saw the light in December. And by the end of the month, the Syracuse University freshman would see it disappear the moment her doctor delivered the news: Her cancer had returned.

Nothing could prepare anyone for that. But Buchan learned the day she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 16 that there was never any certainty to living with cancer, and there was no certainty to living without it.