Professional snowboarder Kimmy Fasani was still breastfeeding her second child when she found a lump under her armpit. Just days later, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and found herself preparing for chemotherapy. Having lost both her parents to cancer, it was a terrifying moment for her, but she tried not to let her family history loom over her as she began treatment. Instead, she focused on the lessons learned from years spent tackling mountain peaks—to stay flexible and adaptable when her plans were upended and to find beauty in the adventure even if she hadn't asked for it.

At the time of her diagnosis, Kimmy and her husband Chris were filming a documentary following five years of their lives and careers. As she faced the challenges of chemotherapy, radiation, and a double mastectomy, she opted to keep the cameras rolling, documenting the highs and lows of her treatment with unflinching honesty. As difficult as it could be to show the world her most vulnerable moments, Kimmy came out on the other side inspired and hopeful that she could remind others like her that they aren't facing cancer by themselves.

In this episode of Your Stories, Kimmy speaks with host Dr. Mark Lewis about the power of advocating for herself, leaning on loved ones, and looking towards the future.

When Molly Hones was diagnosed with fibrolamellar cancer for the second time in less than two years, she made two critical decisions. First: She wouldn’t focus on the unknowns of her condition and would focus on the positives instead.

Second, she would give back by participating in research. And so, in June 2023, Molly traveled to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where oncologist and Conquer Cancer grant recipient Marina Baretti, MD, was running a clinical trial for people with fibrolamellar cancer. “I like to say I’m donating my body to science while I’m still alive,” Molly says. “And how cool is it to see my legacy when I’m still around?”

Which is how she found herself in Baltimore, Maryland, on the day she received an unthinkable phone call: Her husband Grant had passed away at age 45 from a brain aneurysm.

Even faced with such devastating news, Molly remained committed to moving forward with her treatment, connecting with other fibrolamellar patients, and celebrating life whenever she could. Being brave and facing challenges with a smile on her face, she says, is her way of honoring the people she’s lost and the people she’s met through her cancer journey.

In this episode of Your Stories, Molly speaks with host Dr. Mark Lewis about her experience with fibrolamellar cancer, the importance of community when facing a rare cancer, and her hopes of contributing to a world where every person with cancer can live life to the fullest.

As a young person starting over in a new country—one where she didn’t even yet know the language—young Yelena faced no shortage of challenges. But she also found opportunity she believes might not have existed in her native country.

“As an Armenian individual growing up in Azerbaijan, going by my parents’ and my family’s experience, I don’t think I would have had an opportunity to be a physician there,” Dr. Janjigian says. “There was a clear limitation on who got to be a physician, and it’s a prestigious position anywhere in the world. As a relative minority, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. My parents certainly had the courage it took to leave and to come to a foreign country.”

That same brand of courage led Dr. Janjigian to her current work as a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. A specialist in esophageal and stomach cancer, she presented the results of her gastric cancer clinical trial during the plenary session of this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. The presentation was the culmination of more than eight years of work involving nearly 1,000 patients and collaborators. Much of that work, she says, started when she received her first grant from Conquer Cancer, a Young Investigator Award. Receiving that funding, she recalls, was a career-defining moment.

In this episode of Your Stories, Dr. Janjigian speaks with host Dr. Mark Lewis about her journey to become an oncologist, along with her vision for a world where a cancer diagnosis isn’t nearly as frightening as it is today.

With a rare exception here and there, most scientists will at least complete a college-level science class before making their first cancer research breakthrough. Heman Bekele, on the other hand, is just wrapping up his sophomore year of high school.

By the time he was named Time Magazine's Kid of the Year in 2024, Heman was already generating buzz in the scientific community. The year before, he'd won the grand prize in the 2023 3M Young Scientist's Challenge, in which kids compete to think of the most unique solutions to common problems.

His entry? A soap that could potentially be used to treat skin cancer, inspired by his early childhood years in Ethiopia.

"One of the things that really stood out to me was that a lot of people worked really long hours outside in the sun," says Heman, who first began developing the idea when he was around 11 years old. Over time, he learned more about skin cancer, its prevalence in low- and middle-income countries, and the lack of awareness and treatments for patients in those countries.

"I wanted to take action within the field of skin cancer and make it more affordable to get treatment," he explains. From there, Heman began a long, slow, trial-and-error process that ultimately led him to soap as a treatment delivery device. "What is the universal product that everyone uses? I landed on soap, which significantly outweighed every other option."

In this episode of our Your Stories podcast, Heman discusses the story behind his idea for a soap to treat skin cancer, along with the need for affordable skin cancer treatment and the challenges of finding scientific mentors when you're still too young to get a driver's license.

It started—as these stories so often do—with fatigue. At first, Jace Yawnick simply chalked it up to a busy life and a job requiring frequent travel. But then he noticed something: There were times the fatigue kicked in when he hadn’t just gotten off a plane or done anything else particularly strenuous. “Intuitively,” Jace says, “something within me just knew something wasn’t right.”

Then came the coughing and the back pain. It would be months—and more than one misdiagnosis—before doctors found the problem: Hodgkin lymphoma. As he processed the news of his diagnosis, Jace realized something: Facing cancer was not something he wanted to do by himself.

And so, when he started to chronicle his cancer experience online, he was simply looking for catharsis and camaraderie. He got both—along with a community of 700,000-plus followers who’ve followed his entire journey in hopes of seeing the moment he fulfilled a cherished goal: to ring the bell and declare himself cancer-free. In this episode, Jace talks to Your Stories host Dr. Mark Lewis about what it’s like to share your cancer journey with thousands of people, the importance of advocating for yourself, and the role of community when it comes to conquering cancer.

The first cancer diagnosis was scary enough.

“I feel like Hollywood actually gets this moment pretty darn right,” Emma says, recalling the day—not long before her 18th birthday—that she learned she had cancer. “The world around you kind of slows down, you get tunnel vision, maybe a little dizzy. The only thing you can really hear is your breathing and your heart rate.”

Eventually—following multiple rounds of chemotherapy—Emma was declared cancer-free. But then came the second diagnosis.

“The key difference between the first and second time is that the first time, you have fear of the unknown. You don't know what's coming for you, and you don’t know what you don’t know,” Emma says. This time, however, she knew all too well. “I did know what was coming for me. I know what I'm going to be facing. And I would argue that that is almost worse. But, if you're gonna relapse, there's only one positive: You know how to do it better this time.”

In this episode of Your Stories, Emma joins her oncologist, Conquer Cancer-funded researcher Dr. Molly Taylor, for a candid discussion about resilience, recovery, and what helped her make a major comeback after facing cancer twice.

Whether you find it on social media, via search engine, or on a popular news website, it often seems like medical misinformation is everywhere, including in the cancer space.

Maybe it’s the claim that sugar causes cancer to spread faster. Maybe it’s someone saying that people with dark skin don’t get skin cancer. Or maybe it’s the conspiracy theory that drug companies and government agencies are withholding the cure for cancer so they can continue to profit from expensive oncology care.

These are just a few examples of purported cancer facts you might encounter online—and none of them are true.

From misinterpreted oncology research to race-related stigmas and myths, the spread of cancer-related misinformation runs rampant, taking an increasing toll on global health and often hampering our efforts at early detection and prevention. In one 2022 study, researchers found harmful misinformation in approximately 32.5 percent of the cancer-related English-language publications they analyzed.

“Unfortunately, what we're frequently seeing in online networks is that the worst-quality information actually receives more engagement than the high-quality information,” says one of the study’s lead authors, Dr. Stacy Loeb, a Conquer Cancer recipient whose spent years researching the consequences of misinformation for patient health. “The structure of online networks can lead to much more rapid and widespread misinformation than we ever would have seen in the past.”

In this episode of Your Stories, Dr. Loeb joins ASCO’s Sybil Green to discuss the rise of misinformation online, its impact on the cancer landscape, and how people across the cancer community can help to turn the tide.