With Cancer, It's Game On

At age 19, I flew from my first completed year in college to my father's bedside.

He looked so thin as if the life was sucked out of his body. I asked why he wasn’t in the hospital. My mother said he doesn't like staying in the hospital. My mom was head nurse at the hospital at the time, so I figured he would be in good hands. Trips back and forth to the hospital seemed useless as doctors struggled to find a diagnosis. It finally it was revealed he had cancer. Where? To this day I'm still not clear where the cancer was located.

At age 49, my father died of pancreatic, bladder or stomach cancer. I kept the time of death receipt, which didn't shine light on anything.

Years later a woman I went to junior school with died at age 31 due to cancer, which was strange because she would always have prospective boyfriends explain their family's genetic history, to the best a 13-year-old boy could, before entertaining the notion. She had good genetics and only wanted to date boys of the same, she explained as a 13-year-old girl.

I spent most of my life concerned about cancer. Any abnormal lump that didn't disappear after a month set off bells in my head.

Well, I had a pea-sized lump in my groin area. I looked though many online research journals. I worked at Springer Nature as a data specialist, giving me access to an overwhelming amount cancer research. At home I Googled my symptoms hundreds of times.

It came to a point in my search where I was just looking for the most recent cure to anything. To my knowledge it was polio cured in 1955. There are so many research publications. Billions of dollars are being pumped into research academia and companies, with little to show for it.

I was pretty annoyed with it all — including this lump I had. I scheduled an appointment with my doctor, who explained that it's nothing dire, but it will not go away on its own.

So, I set up an appointment to have it removed. It was removed and confirmed that it was not cancer. I perspired with stress through the whole operation. After the operation, I was fed up with getting gut-checked by cancer.

In my mind I thought, “Game on.” Research publications are riddled with Ph.D. jargon that serves no purpose other than to wow the readers on how brilliantly the writers can navigate the English language and to improve institution rankings. There are no new cures, which is fine if you can help the world get to where you left off. Protocols exist, but the numbers pale dramatically in comparison.

I also felt Ph.D. holders were too structured and knew too much in a certain area to be creative in their research. Ever heard too smart for your own good? Creative minds need a crack at it, the general population needs a go at it and scientists need a fresh view on it. So, I created a platform that facilitates and identifies reproducible cancer research while simplifying existing cancer research publications.

The website does this through an annotation, markup, link or email sharing, split-screen comparison, and word simplification of user uploaded research, leaving the cures up to a chosen few just isn't getting us there fast enough.

Every curious mind their hypothesis is welcomed and validated at traceindex.com

Businesses can venture into unfamiliar fields and identify new opportunities by taking a closer look as well.