The Relay for Life, which raises awareness and funding for cancer, is coming up this Saturday and Grand Forks’ Mayor Brian Taylor will speak about his own experience.
“I had intestinal cancer,” Taylor said.
“I was lucky enough to have it removed in an operation, so I didn’t have to go through some of the things that other people have to go through.”
He said that though he avoided some things like chemotherapy, the experience was still traumatic.
“I really avoided the bullet there and I consider myself very lucky that one problem lead to the discovery of another and that I was basically cured without the trauma of going through treatment programs,” he said.
Though he was lucky, Taylor said that others in his family were not.
“On the other hand, cancer has affected my mother, my father, my two sisters,” he said.
“Basically my whole family has had run-ins with cancer. My mother and father died of it. My two sisters both have had it. One had leukemia and the other had skin cancer. Those are the kind of family traumas that make the movement meaningful to me personally.”
Taylor had his run-in with cancer around 2002.
He said that because of the large senior population in Grand Forks, the event is well-received.
“Seniors are a very active group in recognizing the threat that cancer is,” he said.
Taylor also said that pushing pesticide free bylaws, rules and expectations could also help, given the carcinogenic properties of the chemicals.
“Some of the things that people are concerned about in this community are pollution issues we need to deal with. One of them is chemical pollution from all kinds of pesticide use.”
He said the most carcinogenic issues in Grand Forks are wood stoves and dust.
“Our consciousness around the environment speaks to our concern that we fight cancer on a preventive level as well as on a direct research level.”
Taylor will be speaking at the event at the Perley Elementary School field at 10:15 a.m. on Saturday.