The author has spent six years teaching high school science in Southeast Portland. It is located in the heart of the largest immigrant area in the city, and at least 80 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Every day she witnesses how poverty and language barriers create serious challenges in her students' lives. Many students have raised their hands on the first day of the unit to tell the class about a family member who has survived, is suffering, or has died from cancer. Her unit had always started with students reading fictionalized stories of a diverse range of people who develop cancer (National Institutes of Health). This article describes how the author expands her curriculum to include the impact of cancer on her students' lives, and the environmental, social, and political realities of who gets sick and who gets treated. (Contains 3 online resources.)