Cancer is ugly and terrifying. It kills indiscriminately and causes an endless amount of pain in the process.

It steals our time with the people we love. It steals people’s freedom and quality of life. It steals our parents, children, siblings, aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, friends, colleagues, partners, spouses.

So many of us around the world have been, are being or still will be effected by this disease.

At EatSleep Media, we’re only a small team, but between us, we’ve faced a lot of loss and adversity thanks to Cancer.

In honour of World Cancer Day, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on how this hideous illness has touched each of us, and to remember those it took from us.

Laurence

We have a saying in our house: "Cancer is shit".

It was coined by my dad, who lost his wife, my step-mum, to cancer. It was tough seeing him go through the pain, but I can't imagine what it must have been like for her sons & daughter. William in particular was only 15.

At the moment we're living with cancer. My father in law, Mike, is always at the centre of the family. The go-to guy who cooked the big family meals, the one who raced round the garden with the grandchildren playing football or cricket, would be off doing his yoga or volunteering at junior park run.

Cancer has put a stop to so much of that. The treatment has been really tough on him. That the cancer is incurable is heartbreaking. He's still the centre of the family.

Vicky

I lost an ovary and gained a mean looking scar thanks to ovarian cancer about 9 years ago!

But, like most, I've also lost people close to me: my great (in every sense of the word) aunty Maureen being one. She treated me more like a daughter than a niece, and helped me buy my very first DSLR camera. She was massively supportive of everything I did, and I wish she could be here now to see how far her constant encouragement and that camera has taken me.

Extra special mention to my step cousin Tatum, and my girlfriend’s father Steve.

Tatum lost her very short battle with cancer just before her 12th birthday. She was such a caring and happy soul, even through all the pain.

Steve passed away last year after fighting terminal cancer for around 10 yrs, taking on every trial thrown at him with an incredible and inspiring amount of positivity. I only knew him for 3 of those years but in that time he made a huge impression on me.

Dan

My father, Chris Harris, loved motorcycles and proudly raced at the Isle of Man TT. As a family we all went across to the IOM and set up camp in the paddock, with myself and my brother helping with taking my dad’s helmet for cleaning and collecting timing sheets from the office. It's there that we have our most cherished memories as a family.

I lost my father to cancer when I was sixteen. It’s a lot to take on board as a sixteen-year-old figuring out your place in the world and it took me a long time to get over that, but it’s helped shape the person I am today.

Nothing prepares you for watching a loved one go through cancer so hopefully one day we can eradicate this disease and save other families from going through this heartbreak.

Alex

I wasn’t a close friend of Carys, but I did work with her for a long time. I learned enough in that time to know that she’d had two daughters, that she loved running, was incredibly stylish and had a wicked sense of humour. One of those people who could make you smile just by being there.

She remained annoyingly upbeat and positive throughout her treatment for cancer, even starting a dedicated cancer treatment Instagram feed and blog called Colon Lan (see what she did there).

But in the end lost her fight.

There’s a husband without a wife, two daughters without a mam and a load of family and friends who all miss her terribly.

Cancer doesn’t have morals. It doesn’t distinguish between good and bad people. Carys was very definitely one of the good ones. People like her are why we need to beat this thing.

Beth

I lost all of my grandparents to cancer throughout my childhood and teenage years. Even now, I sometimes find myself getting jealous of people my age whose grandparents are still alive. I feel like I missed out on something.

I also lost my aunty Chris to lung cancer when I was thirteen, who I’d always been close with. She died only eight weeks after her diagnosis, and I didn’t know she was ill so it came as a complete shock. It was confusing and overwhelming to experience such a sudden, unexpected loss at that age.

Christine was a fierce woman. She made the first (and the best) key lime pie I ever ate, and she loved a bargain more than anyone I’ve ever known. Every January, she’d get up at 4am to go to the Next sale. She let me watch her favourite film, Bridget Jones’ Diary, when I was about ten, covering my eyes during the rude bits. She was funny and kind and brave and she never hesitated to stand up for herself, or for me, or for anyone she loved. She always said I’d cause a ruckus as I got older and, fair play, she wasn’t wrong. It just breaks my heart that she wasn’t around to see it.

Dave

My dad died of cancer in 2017. I've been fundraising for Velindre since then. That was where he had treatment and where he passed away so it's my way of giving something back.

I remember when I was a kid, I was picking a camcorder and stills cameras at home but he couldn't afford to buy one for me to play around with so when I was maybe 10/11, he took an old milk bottle, some cut up pieces of egg box and some mirrors and "made a camera"!

I could look through an egg box and cardboard eye piece on the side and look out through the "lens" or the neck of the bottle! That was probably my first camera of sorts. I did get a proper camera to play around with a couple of years later but he saw I was interested and put the effort in to make it for me.

2022 marks the first year of World Cancer Day’s three-year campaign to ‘Close the Care Gap’.

All of the people we at ESM have lost to cancer were able to access the care and treatment they needed, in terminal cases and otherwise.

But, for lots of people who live with cancer around the world, this isn’t the case.

Factors like income, location, and education create inequity in who can access care. Discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, disability, age, and sexuality also limits people’s access to the life-saving care and treatment they need.

In order to fight this illness, we need to make changes to ensure that treatment is accessible to everyone.

You can help by donating to World Cancer Day. Your money will be used to facilitate care and effective development of knowledge about cancer for individuals in low and middle-income countries.

You can also support the fight to find a cure by donating to Cancer Research UK, who have been at the forefront of cancer research for 120 years.