On December 24, 2024, I celebrated my 17 year anniversary of finishing my cancer treatment. Over the past 17 years, there are a few questions I consistently get asked, so I thought I would compile them all together here.

When were you diagnosed?

I was diagnosed with cancer when I was 19 years old. It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college at the University of Michigan. At the time of my diagnosis, I was young and naïve. I didn’t want to let cancer get in the way of my life. In my first appointments with my oncologists, I boldly declared that I would be going back to school the next month and doing my treatments in Ann Arbor.

Cancer and chemotherapy quickly put me in my place. Days after my first treatment, I was completely knocked down. I barely had enough energy to walk around, so the possibility of getting myself to my classes and taking on any course-load quickly vanished.

Chemotherapy treatment puts your life into waves. After receiving treatment, my body would be completely depleted. As I would get a bit further out from treatment, I would regain my energy and would be able to do limited activities again. Just when I was feeling good again, it would be time for treatment again.

People have always told me 19 is too young to have cancer. Now as a mother, it does feel young. But at the time, I was treated in pediatrics and was much older than all of the patients around me. This set everything into perspective for me from the start. It was impossible to feel bad for myself when I was next to babies, toddlers, and young children who should be playing on playgrounds instead of sitting in hospital beds. I received a gift they would never have, 19 years of being blissfully unaware of cancer’s grip on life. Emotionally, it was really difficult to be surrounded by children who were fighting for their lives, but looking back, it was part of what got me through my battle with cancer. They were so strong, of course I could be strong. They found ways to laugh, of course I could too. And mostly, it made me never once ask myself “why me?” because I was asking myself “why them?”.

How did you find out?

I vividly remember exactly where I was sitting one day at work when I felt a lump on my collar bone. I was playing with my necklace, chatting with my boss, and found a strange little chickpea sized lump that could move a bit under my skin. It seemed so strange and out of place, but not once did the thought of cancer cross my mind.

After work, I showed the strange lump to my parents. My dad is a surgeon, so he promptly took action. The next day I had an appointment with a plastic surgeon. He took a look at the lump and said that we should keep an eye on it. If it grew or was still present in a month, we would remove it for diagnostics.

A couple of weeks later, I found a large lump in my neck. It was a very swollen lymph node. At the time, I didn’t know anything about lymph nodes or the lymphatic system. The next morning, I went to a primary care doctor. She took a look at both of my lumps and told me that I likely had mono and asked me to go upstairs to get some bloodwork done to confirm. I was positive I didn’t have mono and was terrified of needles at the time, so instead of going up to do the bloodwork, I walked into the stairwell and left the building to go home. As you can imagine, when my dad found out weeks later, he was pretty upset about this decision. In retrospect, it wasn’t the smartest decision, but at the time I would nearly faint at the thought of a needle, so I felt pretty good about the choice.

During this time, I was also rapidly gaining weight. Looking back, it is easy to see that my body was handing my signs of struggle left and right, but at the time, each symptom felt like a strange and completely separate occurrence. To address the weight gain, I changed my diet and started exercising more. At the time, I worked at country club snack bar and figured it was all of the ice cream sandwiches that were causing me to gain weight. I switched up my diet and started running 3 miles a day. Much to my dismay, I was still gaining weight.

About a week after skipping the bloodwork, I had worked two long shifts in a row. I was on my feet all day both days and my legs were very swollen. The next morning, I could barely walk from the swelling and elevated my legs all day for the next two days to try to deflate. On the second day, I ended up sleeping with my legs elevated.

When I woke up in the morning, I couldn’t open my eyes. All of the swelling in my legs had gone into my face. I slowly walked out to the living room of our home, using the walls to guide me, telling my mom not to be scared, but that my face was swollen. I never was able to see what I looked like that day, but my entire face was puffed up, so much that my mom said it looked like I had golf balls under my eyelids. We immediately called the primary care doctor and she had us go down to the hospital to check for blood clots.

I ended up not having blood clots. They asked me finally to do the bloodwork, which did almost make me faint. Then they sent us to the plastic surgeon’s office to have the original lump taken out. By this time, it was Friday at about 3:30pm.

The surgeon quickly removed my lump under local anesthesia. I distinctly remember the surgeon handing the nurse the bottle with my lump telling her to get it to the lab immediately because they were waiting for it. This was the first time I realized something might really be wrong. The lab was waiting for me? On a Friday afternoon? The urgency of it all made me feel really uneasy and wonder if something larger was wrong with me.

Two day later, on Sunday, we got the call. My parents took the call and told me later that day. I remember every detail of that day. I remember my parents sitting me down on the couch with tears in their eyes telling me that I had cancer. Now that I am a parent, I can’t imagine what they went through in those moments. The fear, the devastation, and the uncertainty of what was to come. I didn’t know much of what cancer meant, but I did know that cancer patients didn’t have hair. I remember one of my first questions was if I was going to lose my hair. I completely naïve to the reality I was actually about to face, and yes, I was going to lose my hair.

Two days later, I met with my oncologist for the first time, then had a PET scan to determine my cancer’s spread. I ended up having an uncountable number of tumors concentrated in my neck, chest, and abdomen. The largest tumor was about the size of a grapefruit and was embedded in my chest. My oncologist couldn’t believe that I had been running at all, since my esophagus was squeezed by tumors to under half of it’s normal size. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I could no longer feel any of my ribs through my skin, because they were covered with a mass of tumors. The weight gain and swelling that ended up being my canary in the coal mine, was due to a secondary disease I had developed, nephrotic syndrome.

My PET scan results were read quickly and we received a call that afternoon that they would like me to come back to the hospital and check in to begin chemotherapy. It had been less than week since my lump was removed and I had a first thought that something might be wrong. There was no time to think or process what was going on. In some ways, this was a gift, in other ways it was completely overwhelming. Without knowing it, my life had forever changed in an instant. It wasn’t until months later that I realized the change was not temporary and that I would have to rebuild my new normal in life.

What treatments did you do?

I received 4 months of chemotherapy including the drugs: doxorubicin, bleomycin, vincristine, etoposide, and prednisone. After the completion of chemotherapy, I received 28 radiation treatments. My chemotherapy treatments were completed in cycles, including 3-4 days of inpatient infusions, a small break, then one day of outpatient infusions. My radiation treatments were 5 days a week until completed.

As I noted above, my chemotherapy treatments were in pediatric oncology. However because I was essentially a full grown adult at 19 years old, my radiation treatments were in adult radiology. The comparison of pediatric and adult cancer treatment was rather interesting, they could not have been more different. In pediatrics, the hospital, doctors, nurses, and staff did everything they could to make the treatment facility as happy as possible. They had games, bright colors, bead awards for every treatment you had to receive, not to mention, I was the oldest one there. The adult facility was much quieter, a very typical hospital experience, and I was the youngest one there. Every other patient in radiology would tell me I was too young to have cancer, but in my head I thought of all of the small children I had just been surrounded by for the last few months. The other patients in radiology would tell me their stories of their multiple cancer diagnoses. This broke my heart. Once again, I was in a place where I couldn’t look at my own struggles. I was lucky to only be battling cancer for the first time.

In terms of the physicality of treatments, I knew chemo would be hard. We all know that. You see someone looking frail, without hair and their struggle is obvious. I didn’t expect much out of radiation, but it was much harder on my body. If I didn’t take anti-nausea meds, I would throw up immediately after treatment…every time. The schedule of radiation was relentless. With chemo, I would have a week and half or so without treatment, allowing for my body to heal and regain energy. With radiation, I had a 2 day break every week, which wasn’t enough time to regain anything.

Did you lose your hair?

Yes. About 2 weeks after my first chemotherapy treatment, I started to lose my hair. I had cut it short when I was diagnosed in hopes that I might be able to keep some of my hair. After it started falling out, I cut it shorter. And then I realized I was fighting a losing battle and I decided to shave my head.

Shaving my head wasn’t a big moment for me. Something you don’t really realize about losing your hair, before you start losing your hair, is that it is an incredible mess. Every time I stood up from laying down, it looked like I had left an entire head of hair on the pillow. In the shower, it felt like more hair was falling out than getting clean. After a few days of my hair rapidly falling out, I needed it gone, so my brother shaved it for me in our back yard.

In my first appointment with my oncologist, the only thing that made me cry was when they told me that I would lose my hair. In all honesty, with everything they were telling me that day, losing my hair was the only thing I could really understand. It was representative of my life was going to look different, very different, and I couldn’t stop it. When the time came to shave it, I was knee deep in chemo, losing my hair was one of the smallest concerns on my mind.

Did you wear a wig?

I chose not to wear a wig. At 19, I didn’t quite understand when I would wear the wig and when I wouldn’t. I had to take the semester off of school, but would frequently drive to Ann Arbor to visit my friends and maintain some kind of normalcy in my life. Would I wear my wig around my friends? In my home? Would I scare people if they saw me without it? For me, the best answer was to just be bald.

The thing I didn’t realize about not wearing a wig is that everywhere I would go, every stranger I would pass, would instantly know I had cancer. It became a really difficult part of my journey for me. It sounds very strange, and a bit ungrateful, but every time I went somewhere people were overly nice to me. It was rare that a stranger passed by me without giving me a sad, empathetic smiles. Everyone was only trying to be kind, but it became a constant reminder to me that I was sick.

If I could go back again, I probably would have gotten a wig, and I have encouraged most newly-diagnosed cancer patients who have asked me for advice to get a wig. With chemo, your energy comes in waves. When you are riding a good wave, it is so important for your mind and heart to enjoy it wholeheartedly. A wig gives someone who is bald a little bit of freedom to go unnoticed as a cancer patient and just be a regular person for a day.

Do you get scans today?

I do not.

During the first 2 years after treatment, I was on a strict scan schedule (as are all cancer patients). At first scans every 3 months, then every 6 months, and then annually. This was actually one of the most difficult times for me mentally during my cancer journey. I was terrified of my cancer coming back. After all, the reason for the frequency of the scans is because it is more likely that your cancer will come back early on.

In some ways the scans were comforting to know that I was healthy in that moment, but the 4-6 weeks leading up to each scan were pure terror for me. Looking back, I probably should have done some kind of counseling or therapy at this time, but I was too focused on resuming school and catching up to be able to graduate on time. I would cry myself to sleep for weeks in my college bedroom, terrified that I was going to lose everything again.

When I finally finished my schedule of scans, it was a massive relief. I could now focus on building up my confidence in life and health, without the disruption of scans. It took me over two years to get to a point where I felt like me. It was not the me I was before cancer, sadly she was gone, but it was a new version of me that I had to build after cancer. I will never forget the moment I really felt like a whole person again.

My Views On Cancer Today

I now understand our bodies and cancer better than I ever have. When I was diagnosed my doctors told me that “sometimes cancer just happens”. When thinking of cancer as a roll of the dice, it is really scary. I now know that cancer is not something random that just happens. Cancer grows in our body for a very long time, giving our bodies so many chances to fight it off before it becomes an invasive problem. Now that I understand my body, I have recognized warning signs that my body sent me years before I was diagnosed. Soon I will do a post on all of the things I wish I knew about cancer before my diagnosis. Learning more and understanding more has released me from a crippling health anxiety. For the first time in my 17 years as a cancer survivor I feel like I have the option to control my own health, and while it isn’t always easy or convenient, I will work for my health every day so that I never have to fight for my life again.