Honoring Lynn Bachman - Fighting Early Onset Colon Cancer

Our beloved daughter Lynn died at age 33 from colon cancer. Early onset colon cancer is increasing, and much is still unknown about why this is so. Treatment of early-onset cancer patients poses special challenges, as these people are in the prime of their life and need to be able to juggle possibly intensive treatments with the needs of work and raising a family. Diagnosis of early-onset cancer is too often delayed because cancer is not the first thing that primary care physicians think of when examining a young person with medical complaints.

We are Sharon Reichlyn and Joseph Bachman, Lynn’s parents, and we invite you to make a contribution to Lynn’s memorial fund to help Hopkins researchers and clinicians fight early-onset colon cancer. Lynn fought her cancer for two and a half years at Hopkins under the treatment of Dr. Ilene Browner and the clinical staff at the Kimmel Cancer Center. Even though Lynn studied English literature in college and was not much of a science enthusiast, she took the time to learn as much as she could about her condition and worked collaboratively with Dr. Browner to take charge of her treatment. We would watch her talk with Dr. Browner, and it seemed as if it were two doctors discussing the case. Although Lynn lost her fight in the end, it was not because of any lack of effort on her part and on the part of the physicians and staff at Hopkins.

We are raising money for projects at Hopkins that will support the fight against early-onset colon cancer. Our first project is to support research by Dr. Browner's team using patient data to understand more about early-onset cancer in order to help direct future research on the causes and treatment of the disease. We would like to eventually support fellowships and lecturers to provide outreach to researchers and primary care providers to help them identify and treat this cancer at earlier stages. Please join us in the fight against early-onset colon cancer and donate gnerously.