AYA Cancer

Silenced by the Language of Cancer

As a cancer patient, you learn a whole new language. Well, it’s regional: I learned the breast cancer dialect; you may be fluent in lymphoma. But we all learn it—no choice, total immersion, keep up or die. 75 visits to the hospital in one year is one heck of a Duolingo streak.

Alive

I am still
Alive.
I plan to be
For at least
A few more years.

How Can This Be My Life?

Cancer is a thief in the night. Something you never think is really gonna happen to you till it does and it sends you whirling downward like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. And you just keep falling and falling.

My New Perspective: The Most Valuable Resource

Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. These are some of the measurements we use to explain the passing of time. 36 days. That’s how long it was from the first biopsy to my diagnosis of cancer. 1 week and 2 days. That’s how long from the time of diagnosis until I was seen by Oncology.

Just One Puzzle

Imagine this—you are visiting your parents for a weekend trip that your kids have been counting down to for weeks. You are sitting with your family, puzzle on the table and snacks abounding. Your family’s love for puzzles has passed down generations and across marriages, and there are two rules: nothing under 1,000 pieces and you always start with the border.

Tattoos and Tumors

I wear a frog on my left arm. It’s a tattoo, a little friend formed one day in the Mojave desert, poke by poke, the small dots of ink lodging in my skin permanently.

From Passion to Purpose: Redefining Success After Cancer

“What would you say is your dream job?”

When I was asked this question in a 2018 job interview, it caught me completely off guard.

Letting the Scales Fall From My Eyes

After experiencing multiple life-threatening complications as a child and teenager from the hereditary colon cancer syndrome—Familial Adenomatous Polyposis—and developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result, healing has become a lifelong quest for over 20 years now.

The Ghost of Cancer Is Me

The ghost of cancer is me.

Or rather, the old me.

My Ghost Is My Shadow

Ghost.

Noun.

an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image.