Melanoma claims another young life

I'll be completely honest with you: I've had a crappy week. Sometimes I wonder why, in addition to work, family, and friendships, I keep trying to change the world. Why do I always take on so many extracurricular projects? Why do I read until I can't keep my eyes open at night? Why do I take vacation days so that I can go work a volunteer event? Why do I spent hours researching and writing about something that happened to me three years ago? Why can't I get over it already? The result is inevitable--sometimes I get burnt out. I feel like giving up.

And then I hear that the young woman who we all fell in love with on last month's Stand Up to Cancer Telethon, Hillary Kind, passed away this week. I never met Hillary, but I couldn't help feeling emotional when I learned about her death. When I hear about young women like Hillary or Glenna, it scares me. These women are my age. Hillary was just three months younger than me. She looked radiant just weeks ago. How could something like this happen to her?

I wish I could just give up and start blogging about food or fashion. That I could leave work at night and just zone out--not have to worry about anything except laundry. But I know I can't. As long as there are woman like Hillary who are taken away from us before they can cross off all the items on their bucket lists, I'm going to keep evangelizing the importance of skin cancer prevention and early detection.

I want minors banned from tanning salons. I want to go to a professional sporting event where the cheerleaders aren't all orange. I want little girls growing up loving their natural skin tone and hair color. And I want to see a decrease in the number of young adults being diagnosed with incurable diseases. I like to think that Hillary would, too.