Your Stories: Conquering Cancer

  As a young person starting over in a new country—one where she didn’t even yet know the language—young Yelena faced no shortage of challenges. But she also found opportunity she believes might not have existed in her native country.  “As an Armenian individual growing up in Azerbaijan, going by my parents’ and my family’s experience, I don’t think I would have had an opportunity to be a physician there,” Dr. Janjigian says. “There was a clear limitation on who got to be a physician, and it’s a prestigious position anywhere in the world. As a relative minority, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. My parents certainly had the courage it took to leave and to come to a foreign country.”  That same brand of courage led Dr. Janjigian to her current work as a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. A specialist in esophageal and stomach cancer, she presented the results of her gastric cancer clinical trial during the plenary session of this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting in Ch