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Survivorship
The stories and experiences are written by people after cancer treatments. These stories are written for those learning how to get back to work, college or just trying to be themselves again. Just getting past treatments isn’t enough, it is surviving and thriving that is key to being you again.
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Does Cancer Ever Really Go Away?
That’s a great question. The day I was told “this looks like a malignancy” is far more memorable than the day I was told “your scans and labs are clean, and we shouldn’t need to continue treatment.” During my first visit back to the cancer center for a follow up, I was given the familiar wrist band that all patients receive.
Read More...What I Wish Someone Told Me About Thyroid Cancer
I think there is nothing that anyone, including myself, could do to prepare ourselves for thyroid cancer. How can we give advice, share information about our own past, validation and self-awareness pre-diagnosis with thyroid cancer? Sometimes I wish I knew about thyroid cancer right before I had my total thyroidectomy surgery. Since I was diagnosed […]
Read More...My Cancer Shadow
I drag cancer behind me, like a shadow made of lead. It’s heavy and invisible. If I give it control, it can fully weigh me down, pushing me into a depth of despair. I can fear-spiral into oblivion, expecting leukemia symptoms to pop up at any moment.
Read More...My Living Legacy: Advocacy Born from Survival
Cancer doesn’t just leave—it plants itself in your mind, body, and spirit. Even after ringing the bell, it clings to every aspect of who I am. The scars I carry are not just physical from my double mastectomy, hysterectomy, and DIEP flap reconstruction—they’re etched into my soul.
Read More...My Cancer Story
I was diagnosed with Brain Cancer in December 2012. My anesthesia level was full. My treatment was five days a week for chemotherapy and one day a week for radiation therapy. I will not mention the name of the hospital that treated me, but I will say that it needs to be closed down.
Read More...Expected Losses, Unexpected Gains
I don’t like surprises. As a child, I was told that when I received a gift I didn’t like, I had to swallow my disappointment and pretend that I liked the gift. I found this immensely difficult to do, and would often say “thank you, I love it,” with a grimace and tears threatening to spill over the edges of my eyelids.
Read More...The Mission Behind My Journey
Life often throws unforeseen challenges our way. As the saying goes, “Life be lifing.” For me, that challenge came in the form of a peritoneal mesothelioma diagnosis. This rare and aggressive cancer, usually associated with asbestos exposure, dramatically changed my life when I was just 21.
Read More...Alive and Scarred
Scars – by definition, are “marks left on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn or sore has not healed completely and fibrous connective tissue has developed. A lasting effect of grief, fear, or other emotion left on a person’s character by a traumatic experience. A mark left on something following damage of some kind.”
Read More...“I Won’t Let This Define Me.”
I remember very clearly driving home from my second-to-last chemo. My brother was driving us to his house, which he was trying to sell. He had his own way of being supportive during my treatment, which included occasionally being my support person during chemo.
Read More...Not So Great Expectations
I’ve had many expectations for what I thought my life would become. I expected to get through school with good grades in a subject that would be useful to me in my future career.
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