Rodney Taylor shares the story behind Song for My Father, an expansive oil painting of birch trees that welcomes visitors to the lobby of Roswell Park’s new Scott Bieler Clinical Sciences Center.

As kids grow, their muscles, tendons and ligaments grow as well. So when they complain about aches and pains, it’s often due to the rapid pace of their developing bodies. But if the pain persists, or the pain is coupled with other ailments, it might be something more serious.

FOMO, the abbreviated slang meaning “fear of missing out,” is a huge mental and emotional side effect of being a young adult cancer survivor and represents just a sliver of the unique challenges we have to face during and well after the fight of our lives.

When Dr. Donald Pinkel graduated from medical school at the University of Buffalo in 1951, the world was a pretty dark place for kids with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). They didn’t live long after diagnosis, and experts in the field of blood cancer were convinced the disease was incurable.

If you’re a woman under 40, you’re probably not thinking about menopause. But for young women who have had cancer, treatment-induced ovarian failure – often referred to as “chemopause” – is a very realistic concern.

In 1951, Edwin A. Mirand, PhD, DSc became a permanent employee of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. What would have been impossible to know at the time was just how permanent a fixture he would truly become.

For me, the negative results meant we still couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong, and I'd have to be poked and prodded with more needles.

All three of my kids got all their shots. Every stinging needle, every dose was dutifully administered as a normal part of their childhood. I felt that getting their vaccinations was my responsibility as their parent, just like getting them on the school bus, feeding them at least three times a day and trying to limit their television and internet time.

Chemo brain or chemo fog is well known by cancer patients, but for years researchers struggled to find evidence of its existence. Today, it is widely recognized as a legitimate, diagnosable condition.