Sharing Hope

As Steve Keating lives with a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, he considers how to share his knowledge with others. One way he's found is by joining the Patient and Family Advisory Council at the cancer center.

Each summer during Swim Across America’s Motor City Mile event, swimmers paddle through the Detroit River to raise money for Rogel cancer research. By funding work that aims to solve cancer’s most puzzling problems, they’re really investing in their own future. Here, we outline how their dollars (and dolphin kicks) could lead to life-saving results.

Mike Scaggs couldn't understand why he always had stomach pain. On top of that, he found he was unusually tired all the time. Thanks to a chance meeting with a friend-of-a-friend, Mike came to the Rogel Cancer Center where he learned he had pancreatic cancer.

In a recent interview, Duke -- a Georgia transplant who has been co-pastor of First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor with her husband Paul since 2001 -- reflected on her cancer journey and on living life with a stage 4 cancer diagnosis.

When stage four lung cancer threatened to take Brenda Davis from her family, Michigan Medicine's emergency services team helped her and her family share one last, important moment.

The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network has priorities each year based on needs in Michigan and other states. Additionally, researchers across the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center advocate for patients of all cancer types at the statewide and national level.

#Hailstones were the Rogel Cancer Center’s way of thanking frontline staff; from our custodians to doctors, respiratory therapists to nurses and everyone who comes in every day to help our patients. The project is over. We want to thank everyone who participated -- including many of our Rogel staff -- in this showing of solidarity with our frontline staff.

While researchers at the U-M Rogel Cancer Center and elsewhere continue to pursue scientific insights into pancreatic cancer and develop new therapeutic approaches, surgeons on the front line of patient care are also working hard to improve outcomes.

Kunle and Angela Ogunde remember their daughter, Tara, a University of Michigan Law student, who died from breast cancer in 2019. They traveled to Michigan from their home in Pennsylvania to join others at the annual U-M Rogel Cancer Center Memorial. The memorial -- which includes talks, music, readings and a display of photos and mementos -- is also an opportunity for families to come together with each other, and to experience how they are not alone in their journeys with cancer. For the Ogundes, it proved an opportunity to speak their daughter's name.

Kevin Harrington loves his job delivering packages for United Parcel Service Inc. The 52-year-old husband and father of two from Howell, Michigan, is also a safety co-chair, training other drivers on the UPS mantra to stay safe “one stop at a time.” He applies the same philosophy to another important role: mentoring newly diagnosed bladder cancer patients at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center.