Not So Great Expectations

In partnership with Cactus Cancer Society, this column highlights pieces created by young adults facing cancer in our various programs that focus on creative coping and expression.

Cactus Cancer Society is an innovative 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving young adult cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers, ages 18-45.  We encourage, empower, and connect a diverse and growing community of YAs around the world, 24/7. For more information, visit their website here.

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. I expected to get a job within a career I loved, that paid the bills and allowed me to put money away for retirement. I expected to find the love of my life, marry him in a beautiful ceremony, and dance the night away surrounded by our loved ones. I expected to have our first child and then eventually our second. I expected to watch my family grow and see my kids with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on holidays. They would have kids of their own, and I would hold them in my arms, wondering how my heart hadn’t yet exploded from love. I expected to grow old and retire from working, ready to finally take a break and enjoy my time. It sounds like an incredible life. I knew there would be hardships, but above all, I expected to be happy.

And then cancer happened.

Cancer put the metaphorical wrench in most of those events and either pushed them farther into the future or took away the possibility altogether. I will never know the feeling of pregnancy, and I will never see my parents with my kids. I feel like I am left to grieve the person I was before cancer and cannot return to. I also grieve the things I wanted to achieve, and the person I could have become had cancer never occurred.

Cancer comes with its own expectations. Based on movies and mass media, we are led to believe one of two main stories. In the first story, you get diagnosed with cancer, go through chemotherapy, lose a bunch of weight, lose your hair, get through it all, and become “cured,” never needing to worry about it again. In the second story, you are diagnosed and given an immediate prognosis. Then it shows a montage of you doing the things you always wanted to do before you “lose the battle” and die. If the person in either cancer story is a young adult or younger, it is always said that they were “just too young” for this to happen.

Can the events in these stories actually take place? Absolutely, they can. I personally started with a chemotherapy regimen, lost a bunch of weight, and most of my hair. However, like the diversity of the people who enter the cancer club, cancer and its various treatments mean different experiences for different people. Even those who have the same cancers and go through the same treatments can have wildly different reactions. Before my diagnosis, if you had asked me if I thought patients with blood cancer would live long, I would have said no. My logic was that blood is everywhere in the body, so how can anyone survive blood cancer? I had no clue.

I’ve learned a whole lot since then and continue to do so. I understand why the media doesn’t want to portray the gruesome realities of what really happens after a cancer diagnosis. It’s depressing and scary to know that stuff can happen to you. I think it’s important to show the general public different experiences from the people who went through them. Once treatment and survival mode ended, I quickly came to realize that survivorship is a whole new world, for which I felt grossly unprepared. No one talks about that part.

As for me, cancer has greatly changed my view on expectations. Particularly when it comes to medical matters, I learned not to have any. It’s hurtful to expect something to happen, and then it doesn’t. I never know what results will come of my blood work each month. Now, I always say that I’ve learned to manage my expectations. It’s a sad lesson, but that’s how life is sometimes.

Photograph by Ashley Landi

This photograph was featured in the December 2024 Expectations issue of Elephants and Tea Magazine! Click here to read our magazine issues.