After a year filled with fear and worries, actor Billy Baldwin finally has not one but two milestones worth celebrating: His son, Vance, diagnosed with cancer in 2018, turned 18 years old last month, and his mother, Carol M. Baldwin, who discovered she had breast cancer in 1990, turned 90. Even better: Both of his beloved family members are now cancer free.
Vance, who kept his cancer and subsequent treatment extremely private, had 28 rounds of chemotherapy after his initial diagnosis, according to an Instagram post from his father. His diagnosis came when he was only 16 years old.
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To honor his mother, Baldwin posted a tweet requesting donations to the foundation his mother founded, the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
Vance’s Journey
Members of the famous Baldwin family (including Billy Baldwin’s brother, Alex Baldwin, and niece, Hailey Baldwin, who is now married to superstar Justin Bieber) have not publicly shared details of Vance’s diagnosis.
In an earlier Instagram post, the first to make public Vance’s cancer, Baldwin said, “He kept it very quiet… we all did. He went through 28 rounds of chemo yet stayed VERY positive, focused and kept his life as normal as possible … every single day. Kid's a tough son of a bitch. Sharp as a tack. Funny as hell. Tough as nails. Heart of gold."
Members of the SurvivorNet community often emphasize the importance of maintaining a positive attitude and semblance of normalcy during a cancer journey. For instance, Dr. Zuri Murrell, a colorectal surgeon at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet, "My patients who thrive, even with stage four cancer … those are patients who have gratitude in life.”
And many survivors make an effort to stay active during treatment as well, maintaining a level of normalcy throughout the whole process. Breast cancer survivor Tiffany Dyba, who created “hip-hop chemo” videos during her treatment to show her social media followers that she could still have fun, told SurvivorNet that “it’s important for people to see that I'm OK, number one, because I am OK. I think there's such a stigma around cancer, to where many people just think that I'm bald, and sick, and cowering in a corner, and throwing up. I want to bust through those stereotypes … I'm not going to act sick if I don't feel sick."
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