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Imagine a future where far fewer women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and women with a family history of breast cancer don’t have to make the difficult, even devastating choice to get a preventive mastectomy. Instead, women would get a series of shots that teach their immune systems how to quash breast cancer before it becomes a problem. (Lisa Jarvis, 5/30)

“Hey, I’m sorry to bother you, but I could really use your advice on something.” As fellows in oncology training programs, we’re both accustomed to fielding texts, emails, and calls that start out like the above from family, friends, and acquaintances seeking guidance for themselves or their loved ones after a cancer diagnosis. (Samyukta Mullangi and Vinayak Venkataraman, 5/31)

I woke up crying in the gray light of early morning. For the first time in eight weeks, I found myself alone. My husband and our son were on a camping trip, one that I could no longer join them on because my body had turned on me. Work had kept me busy the previous evening, but now, it was just me and Potter, our aussiedoodle, in a quiet house. Me, the dog and the tumor. I’m not a crier. I’m an editor and a mom, constantly juggling stories and meetings and car lines. I’d only cried twice up to this point, both times out of shock and over quickly. (Ellen E. Clarke, 5/30)

More than three years after the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic — and three weeks after WHO said that the virus is no longer a “public health emergency of international concern” — COVID landed at my door. (Renee Graham, 5/30)

A child has cancer. Should parents or the medical establishment decide the healing journey? Do parents have a right to seek alternative approaches, or are they beholden to the cancer industry and its protocols? Should the state have the right to remove a child from the home if parents decline a treatment they deem destructive? (Lisa Swanson, 5/30)

I was always a person who had to have everything together. Failure was not an option in my book. Neither was asking for help. Then I had a baby. I was – or I should have been – ecstatic to embark on this new journey. But why was it so difficult? It’s hard to understand how the body that just birthed an entire, beautiful human being can turn on you so effortlessly. (Jordyn Wilson, 5/31)

Connecticut can be a state of vast disparities despite our small size. This is particularly evident in the area of healthcare. We have some of the best medical training programs in the country, yet Connecticut ranks 47th in retaining the physicians we train in our state. We also have world-class health systems and virtual healthcare deserts in parts of our state with severely underserved areas and populations. (David J. Hass MD, 5/31)