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June 4, 2010
Doing big battle with disease
Yael Cohen founded F Cancer when her mother, Diane, fell ill.
OLGA LIVSHIN
“You tried to kill me and I won! F--- you, cancer!” This defiant comment on the F Cancer website is bound to get attention. The new website letsfcancer.com has, in fact, taken the world by storm – a storm of pain, compassion and anger.
Highly interactive and merciless, like cancer itself, built almost entirely in black and white, letsfcancer.com invites comments. Since going online in February 2010, the Internet community has responded to its “F--- Cancer!” message with more than 400 postings, each throbbing with tragedy, love and fighting spirit. These postings are so poignant and heart-rending they are hard to read en masse.
“F--- Cancer! – that’s what everyone is thinking when ... faced with this disease,” said Yael Cohen, founder of the new Vancouver nonprofit organization.
Cohen started F Cancer back in 2009, when her mother Diane was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a brutal shock, but 22-year-old Cohen gathered her courage to help her mom though treatment and recovery.
“I heard the phrase in passing, and it immediately resonated with me. I got my mom a T-shirt and had the phrase printed on it. She wore it all the time, and people constantly stopped her on the streets.... They offered their support and their personal stories. Very quickly it became clear that a lot of people shared the ‘F--- Cancer’ sentiment.”
The overwhelming reaction to the T-shirt made Cohen realize that people affected by cancer needed an outlet for their emotions. She had a bunch of T-shirts made to sell to her friends and family to raise money for cancer. But it wasn’t enough.
In the manner of the modern young, she shared her thoughts with her friends on Facebook, and was flooded with messages and questions. Almost overnight, F Cancer had become a grassroots movement, spreading through cyberspace like a virus.
The next step was to start her own nonprofit organization. At the moment, F Cancer employs only one full-time employee, Cohen’s friend and staunch supporter Heather McKenzie-Beck. The rest of the people working for F Cancer are volunteers. Although Cohen is the heart of the organization, she doesn’t take any salary from her position.
The majority of the company assets – furniture and office decor – have been donated, including the website. Tommy Humphreys, the owner of the Vancouver web-design firm PACWEBCO and Cohen’s childhood friend, offered to create the site after coming across her Facebook group.
The site allows F Cancer to sell T-shirts online. “T-shirts are a way to raise awareness about our organization, but we’re so much more,” Cohen said. The site also offers information about cancer and provides an open forum for those who wish to express their feelings. Serving as an online circle of sharing, the site draws people in to talk freely about their suffering, as well as their triumphs in overcoming the killer disease. It has become so popular that, on April 30, it won the Site of the Day Award by the Favorite Website Awards – the “Oscar” for websites. According to Cohen, the site had 20,000 views in May alone.
Besides the website, F Cancer has other plans. Their next project is postcards. “We want to educate people,” said Cohen. “We know that almost 95 percent of cancers are curable if caught in stage one. That is our focus. The problem is people aren’t looking for cancer. By the time they accidentally find it, it’s often in an advanced stage and hard to treat. Unlike many charities, our focus is not to fund research for the cure. We’re not saying forget research, we’re saying let’s fight this disease as effectively as possible until there’s a cure. We have to look for cancer while it’s still in a manageable stage. We have to know the risk factors and the earlier warning signs. We want to start a conversation about cancer. The phrase we use for the T-shirts is designed to shock people into breaking the silence.”
Cohen and her company plan to publish and distribute free paper and PDF postcards with information on about 20 different forms of cancer. “We must take responsibility for our bodies and our health. We have to know how to talk to doctors, what questions to ask, when to get a second opinion. The information is already available, but it’s scattered, not packaged right. That’s what we’re doing.”
Cohen admitted that her target audience was and still is her generation – the generation of the Internet. That’s why the first version of the T-shirts was uncensored. “We don’t have to be polite about cancer. We’re allowed to show emotions, to be angry, to be sad. We have to get real.” But, in recognition of older, less brash generations, there are two versions of the T-shirts, censored and uncensored, available now. Nobody should be too embarrassed to wear one. To fight cancer, we must first begin the conversation.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She’s available for contract work. Contact her at [email protected].
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