Meet Ashley and Michael Cramer

Most parents will never have to explain leukemia to their teenager. Or figure out how to smuggle comfort into a sterile hospital room without setting off a fire alarm. Ashley and Michael did both, in real time, with the world watching and zero instructions.

Stupid Cancer featured their story, and it slaps harder than most origin stories. Ashley was thrown into caregiving like someone gets thrown out of a moving car. She didn’t train for this. She didn’t ask for it. She made it up as she went because cancer doesn’t pause while you Google how to be a perfect mom.

Michael, her teenage son, went from band practice to bone marrow biopsy faster than most kids can open TikTok. And somehow they both found the strength to turn their personal disaster into public service.

They built their platform with no PR team. No editor. No crisis comms playbook. Just pain, candor, and some wildly uncomfortable truths about what it's like to be young, sick, and human in a healthcare system that doesn’t know what to do with any of that.

They speak. They write. They show up. Because their voices matter. Because they remind the rest of us to stop pretending we can power through this crap alone.

Bravo. Never change. Stay you.

If this hit home, toss it a like, repost, comment, or tag someone you may be ambivalent about. One click makes a bigger difference than you think.

https://stupidcancer.org/you-cant-always-diy/