What good is a Livestrong bracelet?

I’ve worn a Livestrong yellow bracelet for a number of years. I found it in a geocache and put it on to remind me to pray for a young teenager in our church who was dying from bone cancer. I’m not sure I have ever taken it off. I wore it all through my wife’s breast cancer treatment (three years now since the end of chemotherapy and then radiation treatments) and all through her Mom’s unsuccessful fight with cancer.

The backs of my hands are sun damaged. Yesterday I showed my doctor a bump that is normally right under my Livestrong bracelet. “Looks like basal cell carcinoma,” he said as he went off to find a dermatologist. The dermatologist (a skin cancer specialist) agreed and took a biopsy. Next week we’ll have the results and figure out what to do next.

The bracelet certainly isn’t a talisman, but I’ll continue to wear it as a reminder that cancer is a great destroyer and no one is immune. Even for cancer survivors, life is never the same.