AYA Cancer

Dear Cancer, Keep Your Distance

Hey Cancer,
I can see you looking at me.
Stay back, across the street, stay steady.
It’s been two years.

I still feel you crawling under my skin
after kicking you out of me.

Dear Cancer, You Taught Me Loss and Light

Dear Cancer,

For a long time, I thought you only came into other people’s homes. You certainly would never enter mine and wreak havoc. Until you did. When I was fifteen you filled my home and apparently my dad’s bloodstream as well. Leukemia. When we told people the news they would cry, and I never understood why. What’s wrong? This won’t take him down. Do you know my dad? He is as tough as nails!

Dear Cancer, My Life Looks A Little Different Now

Dear Cancer,

If I would have written this letter a year ago, I’d have said you ruined my life. A year ago I was regularly having flashbacks of going through aggressive treatment for Primary Mediastinal Large B Cell Lymphoma during the winter months of 2020 and 2021. A year ago I was still reeling from my third cross-country move in as many years. A year ago, my body was still getting rid of all the toxins from the aggressive chemotherapy regimen I was put through. A year ago, I still felt so damn misunderstood by my friends and family.

There is No End to the Guilt

The guilt eats away at you. I’m coming up on 10 years post-transplant. I ask less now, “Why am I alive?” but feel more the guilt of my life. The guilt of having a job and friendships and being able to live even a somewhat normal life. The weight of the guilt is crushing. 

I was at the Thanksgiving service where J shared the excitement that the cancer was in remission. She and her husband both kindly patted my shoulder on their way to speak at the front. But what was I to say? Congratulations?

Prayers

Prayers work wonders
Yet sometimes
They also make you wonder
Why sometimes
They are just not heard

College and Cancer

Having been a class of 2020 student, I spent my first year of college at home, taking my classes online. I hung around with my old friends in my old neighborhood, itching to get away to something new. When I received my housing offer for my university’s dorms my sophomore year, I was ecstatic.

How It Feels to Be an AYA

Being an AYA is a unique experience—especially when you have a rare cancer like me. AYA cancer is rare, and then I have a rare cancer on top of that. How do I hate thee cancer? Let me count the ways.

Wait, I can’t quote/butcher Shakespeare like that. I don’t want my high school English teacher to come hunt me down (Mr. S was a big guy!), so let me use something not cribbed from the most quoted author in the English language.

Treat Us Gently

I wish people knew that once cancer has attacked your body and the treatment ravages your immune system, there is no going back to before, nor do you never think about the cancer again—if it goes into remission.

Every year when flu seasons are at their highest, it’s more significant because now the flu isn’t just time off from other people and life’s routine—the flu could now seriously deplete your body for several more days and weeks. Preventative health is a giant measure in seasons of communal illness. Especially now that flu seasons have doubled up with pandemic precautions since 2020.

My Dark Gamble

Hi! I’m Liz. I got my ticket to join the “Young Adults With Cancer” community at age 33. If you found this article, you know better than most the alarmingly far-reaching impacts cancer has on lives. Obviously, it was the most physically challenging part of my journey, but let me have you take a step back. This story is to appreciate how a dark gamble (okay okay, “healthy risk”) won. That gamble gave me a launch pad and has me beaming about my career today.

Cancer Sucks

I was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s Lymphoma two weeks before my 31st birthday, almost one year ago now. I had vaguely heard about this type of cancer before in media here and there but certainly never expected it to happen to me. I felt more disassociation than anything when I received my diagnosis. I couldn’t believe it.