Jorien "Sheever" van der Heijden Reveals She Has Cancer
32 year old Jorien van der Heijden, a Dutch national and popular Dota 2 caster announced on her Twitch channel on Sunday (14 May) that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Upon revealing her battle with cancer, Sheever sent shockwaves across the gaming community, particularly the Dota 2 community and has received tremendous support through words of encouragement, advice and moral support. Her announcement also attracted the attention of Totalbiscuit, a prominent YouTuber with 2.2 million subscribers who is also battling cancer.
Totalbiscuit spent over an hour on Sheever's Twitch channel sharing his experience on fighting cancer and tips on how to cope with the disease.
Interestingly, Sheever and Totalbiscuit are both 32 years old.
Sheever looked stunning in a red dress while interviewing JerAx, a Dota 2 pro from Finland during the 2017 Kiev Majors
It Is Believed That One of The Causes of Cancer is Stress
When a person is under significant emotional stress, it can affect the body's immune system in a negative way. This negative impact on the immune system is believed to be one of the contributing factors to a person developing cancer.
When the immune system is weakened, cancer cells start to flourish. Of course stress is only one of the contributing factors.
Other factors that play a role in whether a person develops cancer include:
- inherited genes,
- stress levels,
- what kind of foods you eat,
- what you drink ,
- the type of air you breathe,
- the chemicals you put on your body (deodorants, etc.),
- whether you get enough sunlight and vitamin D,
- whether you get enough quality sleep,
- and whether you exercise
If we take a closer look at Sheever's hectic schedule and busy lifestyle, we can see that it may have been a source of emotional distress which has been ongoing for several years. Sheever looks happy and smiley in front of camera most of the time, but the kind of emotional battles she has to face behind the scenes is a mystery. Cancer does not develop overnight. It takes years before a person's immune system is compromised to such a degree that cancer cells can proliferate.
The most recent data (2014) from the US Centers for Disease Control revealed that cancer was the second leading cause of death in the United States, causing 591,699 recorded deaths in 2014, only behind heart disease which recorded 614,348 deaths (US only).
Sheever Gets Ready to Battle Cancer
In her twitch stream, Sheever mentioned that she would be undergoing chemotherapy on Thursday (18 May). The treatment will be done in a hospital in Sheever's home country of Netherlands. She says that her brother will be accompanying her to undergo her first chemotherapy session. Sheever will be going for a "cold cap" treatment which reduces the amount of chemotherapy medicine that reaches the hair follicles.
Being the statistician that she is, (a Dota 2 player, analyst and commentator), Sheever seemingly joked that "there is a 33% chance that I may be able to keep some of my hair".
We encourage those of you who wish to show your support to get in touch with Sheever through her website, which has a contact form and links to her social media channels.
We wish Sheever a swift and triumphant victory against cancer. And we hope she quickly gets on the road to recovery.
