cancer
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Beyoncé FaceTimes With Fan Battling Cancer
Ebony Banks is a Houston high school senior who is currently battling stage 4 cancer. Though the school year isn’t yet over, Banks’ high school granted her one wish, which was to graduate early. It also pulled off another wish with the help of Houston native Beyoncé. Banks wanted to meet Beyoncé, and with the…
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Family of Henrietta Lacks Seeks Compensation for Unauthorized Use of Her Cells
The story of Henrietta Lacks and her “immortal” cells is not quite over. Her eldest son, Lawrence Lacks, has come forth requesting compensation from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University and possibly other institutions for the unauthorized use of the famous cells that prompted decades of medical advances. The Washington Post reports that Lawrence Lacks, who says…
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What's Ailing Bishop Eddie Long?
I’m concerned about Bishop Eddie Long. In August of 2016, Long, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, went viral after video showed that he’d lost an alarming amount of weight. “People are asking, ‘Bishop, what happened to all of you?’” he said on a video posted to Facebook that has since been taken…
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Ken Thompson, Brooklyn, NY’s 1st Black District Attorney, Dies at Age 50
Brooklyn, N.Y., District Attorney Ken Thompson died Sunday after a battle with cancer, his family announced, NBC New York reports. He was 50 years old. In a statement released Tuesday, Thompson had announced a leave of absence in order to fight his cancer, not specifying what type of cancer he had or any time frame…
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Family of Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn Sues Tobacco Industry Over Star’s Cancer Death
The family of baseball star Tony Gwynn is blaming the tobacco industry for the death of the Hall of Famer, who succumbed to salivary gland cancer in 2014, and filed a lawsuit Monday in San Diego Superior Court, the Washington Post reports. The wrongful death suit names several defendants, including Altria Group Corp., the parent…
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White Privilege Seems Like An Abstract Concept, Until You Remember It Kills Black People
My mom was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in November of 2012. At that point, she was given four to six months to live. But she held on for an entire year, not succumbing to the disease until November of 2013. Her diagnosis, while devastating, was not a surprise. She was a smoker for…
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No News Story Has Ever Made Me Happier Than The News About Leah Still
Last night, while watching TV with The Wife Person and scrolling through Facebook on my phone, I came across a story about Leah Still, the four-year-old daughter of Cincinnati Bengal Devon Still. If you recall, Leah’s battle with pediatric cancer made national headlines last year, in large part due to her father’s pre-surgery “pep talk”…
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Remembering Stuart Scott
I know I watched SportsCenter before Stuart Scott made his first appearance on the show 1993. I just don’t remember what it looked like or sounded like prior to him. This morning, as I was getting ready for work, I did what I always do and turned on ESPN to watch SportsCenter, but this time…
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I Just Want To Talk To My Mom Today
It feels odd to type that The Sopranos helped prepare me for my mother’s death. It seems like a something Rob Gordon or some other character in a movie a bit too self aware to be completely realistic would say, not a real person. But I am a real person. I’m really sitting here, really…