Dear Cancer, Fuck You.

When I heard the theme, my mind went straight to Ted Lasso. Anyone else a fan? It’s a show that sneaks up on you—starts off light and funny, and then out of nowhere, punches you in the gut with emotion and heart. That’s kind of what cancer feels like, actually. One moment, life is moving along as planned, and the next, everything is upside down. There’s one episode in particular that stood out to me—Mom City. The layers in that episode, the vulnerability, the strength, the quiet heartbreak… it stuck with me. It felt familiar.

So here we go.

Dear Cancer,

Fuck you.
Fuck you for barging into my life like an uninvited guest with no plans of leaving.
Fuck you for showing up out of nowhere and hijacking everything I thought I knew.
Fuck you for the fear you injected into the most mundane moments—doctor’s appointments, test results, a strange ache that I used to shrug off but now spirals into panic.

Thank you, though. Yeah, thank you—for being found early. I know how many don’t get that chance. I do. I got lucky in that way, and I’m grateful for it. But even then—fuck you for being there at all. Because once you’re in someone’s life, you never really leave. There’s the physical part, sure—the treatments, the medications, the scans—but there’s also the mental part. The fear that lingers. The new version of myself I had to learn to live with.

Thank you for the lessons.
I’ll give you that.

You taught me resilience—the kind I didn’t know I had until I was forced to use it every single day. Not the Instagram-quote kind of resilience. Real, messy, gritty, tear-stained resilience. The kind that keeps you standing when your legs feel like Jell-O, and the kind that whispers “keep going” when you’re too tired to even whisper it to yourself.

You taught me to laugh at things that, honestly, shouldn’t be funny—but somehow are. The pitch-black humor of comparing port scars or chemo side effects, of naming your tumor like it’s a shitty roommate, of joking about hair loss while sobbing into a pillow. Because if I didn’t laugh, I’d drown.

You taught me medical language I never wanted to know. Suddenly I could rattle off drug names, dosages, side effects, scan types, and lab results like I had a degree. I became my own advocate—because I had to. Because no one else could speak up for me the way I needed. You forced me to fight for myself in rooms full of white coats, to ask the questions no one wanted to answer, to speak clearly even when my voice was trembling.

But still—fuck you.

Fuck you for what you put my family through. For the sleepless nights, the hospital waiting rooms, the whispered conversations in hallways when they thought I couldn’t hear them.

Fuck you for the way my children looked at me—not always with fear, but sometimes with confusion. They were too young to understand what was happening, but not too young to feel the heaviness in the air. They saw the changes—my body, my energy, my mood—and they didn’t know why. They just knew something was wrong. That kind of helplessness is a heartbreak I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Thank you, though—because in the wreckage, there was something beautiful. My children saw what strength looks like—not just the kind that fights, but the kind that breaks and still gets up again. They saw me lose my hair, puke into toilets, sleep in hospital beds, react violently to medication that was supposed to help me, cry until there were no tears left—and they also saw me come back from it. They saw a version of their mother that was both powerful and profoundly human.

You didn’t win. I did.

I’m still here. I’m still standing. You may have taken parts of me—physical, emotional, mental—but you didn’t take all of me. In fact, you awakened parts I didn’t even know were there. You pulled me through fire, and I came out changed, yes—but not destroyed.

And fuck you—seriously—for the financial nightmare. For the bills that keep coming. For the invoices that say things like “life-saving treatment” next to dollar amounts no one should have to afford just to stay alive. For the stress of wondering how to keep my body alive and my bank account intact. Fuck you for the system that allows profit to be prioritized over people. What am I supposed to do—turn down treatment? Let you win? Not an option.

You cost me more than you know. You cost me time. Time with my kids. Time with my friends. Time in my own body, when it felt like mine. You cost me sleep, peace of mind, plans, dreams. You cost me relationships that couldn’t hold up under the weight of what you brought. You cost me a version of myself I’ll never get back.

But thank you—for the community. For the unexpected heroes who stepped up. For the friends who stayed, who showed up, who carried food and love and patience into my life when I needed it most. Thank you for making me see who really had my back. Thank you for the nurses who remembered my name, the doctors who treated me like a person instead of a diagnosis, and the fellow patients who saw me—really saw me—because they were in it too.

Thank you for showing me what it means to live with urgency and with intention. You don’t get to come out of a fight with cancer unchanged. That’s not how this works. You come out with a sharper sense of what matters, with less tolerance for bullshit, with more love for the ordinary days. You come out slower, and somehow faster—more deliberate, but more driven. You come out knowing how precious every hour is. How sacred it is just to be here.

You thought you’d take me down.
You didn’t.

You thought you’d define me.
You don’t.

You thought you’d own me.
You won’t.

This story isn’t about you. It’s about me. It’s about how I walked through hell with blistered feet and came back with a story to tell. It’s about how I cried and screamed and laughed and survived. It’s about how I carried myself through the storm when the ground gave way beneath me.

So, Dear Cancer: here’s a loud, unfiltered, final FUCK YOU—for the pain, the trauma, the wreckage.
And, fine, a quiet thank you—for what I learned, for who I became, and for what I’ll never again take for granted.

Victory is mine.
Not yours.
Salud.