AYA Cancer

What People Need to Know About Cancer

AYA Cancer Awareness week was April 7-11. About 89,000 adolescents and young adults (ages 15-39) are diagnosed with cancer across the United States each year according to the National Cancer Institute, and in 2022 I was one of those young adults diagnosed with cancer.

My Identity After Cancer

My mother is crying in the other room, and I don’t understand why, but I am already trembling. My heart beats faster and faster as the doctors and nurse’s shoes squeak across the hallway floor as they walk swiftly past my hospital room to see what the commotion is.

Why Did I Get Cancer?

I grew up in the Catholic Faith. Everything was all part of God’s plan. I could pinpoint certain things in my life and say without a doubt that it was supposed to happen this way.

Appointment Summary

Dr. Crow is always in the know,
and running the show.
Ensuring everyone is following the memo:

Survivor’s Guilt: Remembering Elaine

Survivor’s guilt is a strange and persistent feeling—one that I didn’t have the words for as a child. When I was younger, I knew I had survived retinoblastoma, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant in comparison to others who didn’t have the same outcome.

Meaning in the Rubble

Just a few months before my diagnosis, at 29, I felt like I could do anything. That same year, I was featured in the Pittsburgh Business Times 30 Under 30 issue, served on multiple nonprofit boards, and managed a national network of nonprofits.

How To Encourage AYA Community Cancer Patients and Survivors

I wanted to share my thyroid cancer story and my testimony to others who are going through a cancer journey and cancer treatments. It is important to read these articles that I have written about my own experience with thyroid cancer about going through thyroid cancer treatment and how it makes me feel going through my thyroid cancer journey.

Everything Happens . . . And?

Being diagnosed with cancer teaches you a lot of things. When it comes to the people in your life, I truly believe that it brings out the best in them, and that they want to be helpful.

What’s the Reason?

People say all kinds of things when you get cancer.

“You’re a fighter, you’re gonna beat it!”

“You’re so strong!”

“You’re inspiring!”

“It’s all part of a plan.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Cancer Gets in the Way of Adulting in Many Ways

I’m almost three years out from being diagnosed and treated for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and I’m learning from experience that cancer never quite goes away. Both physically and emotionally I am living with the residual side effects of my treatment, and it is rough.