January, 18th 2025: Join us for food, drinks, dancing, and author sharing — all to support our mission. Learn more here!
Patients
The stories and experiences in this category are written by people currently going through treatments for cancer. Read these stories to find inspiration and know that you are not alone in your experience with cancer.
Want to submit a story? Click Here.
Dear Cancer, I Choose to Heal
I know that you are going to create a whole lot of trouble. Anxiety, limited mobility, night sweats, allergic reactions, infections, dry mouth, hair loss… to name a few. So, I get it. People want to fight you. I’ve seen the “Kick Cancer’s A$$” t-shirts, mugs, and novelty socks. But, I am hesitant to put on my boxing gloves. For me, I am not sure I want my journey to be a violent confrontation.
Read More...Dear Cancer, There is Life After You
Why cancer, why did you come into my life, why did you break my heart, why did you take my family away from me? What did I do to deserve this? Do you hate me that much? Cancer became my number one enemy. I wish researchers can come up with a one cure for all, but a girl can dream, right. How do you heal a broken heart? Can you really stop all my tears shed every night? Is it your life’s vision to wipe out the world’s population?
Read More...Dear Cancer, Stop Taking Things from Me
Dear Cancer, All you have done is take things from me. You’ve taken my mother and brother. I knew you would come after me eventually. The symptoms had already started when you got one of my favorite aunts. Did you have to take my grown niece too? After I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma you tried to beat me down some more by making me watch several friends die of cancer. None of your tricks worked. You are an idiot. You are nothing but a piece of low-life, scumbag, son of a you know what.
Read More...How That C Word Rocked My World
It’s been just over three months to the day since I found out that I had a golf ball sized brain tumor in my right frontal lobe. Just about a month after that I found out that it was a grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma, a very aggressive form of brain cancer.
Read More...You Are Perfect
A few months ago, a young woman who knew me through a mutual friend asked me how old I was. When I told her I had just turned thirty, she said “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but when I’m your age, I hope I don’t turn out like you…. You know, with cancer.”
Read More...A Pharmacist’s Story
You know how they say that cancer affects everyone in some shape or fashion? It may be a personal journey or that of a friend, partner, coworker or family member.
Read More...You Have Cancer… Again.
“You have cancer … again.” You would think those words wouldn’t sting so badly the third time. As if you’d become numb to them or had grown a thick skin towards them or maybe the familiarity of those three words made them not so terrifying.
Read More...The Other Shoe
I remember my freshman Honors College Orientation. We were each given a fill-in-the-blank paper. What are your graduation goals? What academic goals do you have? What social groups are you going to join?
Read More...Men, Cancer, and the ‘S’ Word
Shame. The man who trusted his body feels betrayed by it. The man who had developed confidence in his environment feels suddenly and irrevocably lost. He’s facing a killer disease that he knows nothing about, without the language or tools to fight it. Now, he’s a “patient” at the mercy of doctors, insurers, and the health care system.
Read More...Warnings – My Ovaries Are Trying to Tell Me Something
Before I was discharged from the hospital my surgeon and my gynecologic oncologist had warned, “Stay off the internet. You’ll only succeed in terrifying yourself.” If their intent was to protect me by saying this they had both failed miserably.
Read More...