Six Years Out: World Cancer Day, 2014

I remember the moment my parents told me I had cancer. I remember the shock, and my boyfriend's arms around me. I remember crying, calling my friends. I remember how Rachel and Gen rushed over, tears in their eyes. Meghan and Erin's cracked voices over the phone. My cousins...my siblings...my parents' fear.

I don't really remember surgery. I remember checking in. I remember going home.

I remember the radioactive iodine treatment. The men in Haz-Mat suits, giving me a toxic pill to swallow as they stood the recommended amount of feet away, tape measure in hand. The walk behind my mother to her car.

I remember driving to New Jersey with my mom, who wasn't afraid to be near me, even though I was quite literally toxic. My friends visited through the bathroom door. I was isolated for a week. My dad bought me a TV. My siblings were scared.

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Next month, I'll undergo a full-body scan to make sure nothing's left. 

My doctor said there's abnormal lymph nodes, so I'll get an ultrasound too.

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These six years post-diagnosis have been the hardest of my life. Cancer doesn't end when treatment does; it's effects linger, especially if you are young when you are diagnosed. 

Young adult cancer survivors used to exist without acknowledgement. They still have the highest mortality rate out of all cancer populations, because they are often overlooked. To be young and vital and then suddenly sick is terrifying.

I remember the depression right after treatment. It was all a blur; I graduated from college 2 months after I was diagnosed. Everything was happening at once.

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I can't imagine my life now without the friends and community that I've come to know through this terrible disease. I can't imagine a world without their friendship and support. It is the silver lining.

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Cancer destroyed my body. Cancer provoked Type 1 Diabetes; last week, my doctor told me it was the trigger. It took a mild case of lupus and made it suddenly more severe. I have been so sick and so sad. I have been angry and depressed.

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This week, I move to Brooklyn. I have been home for almost 18 months, recovering and then getting sick again. I've accepted another diagnosis. This month I turn 28 and I'm getting an insulin pump for my birthday.

I didn't live for so long; I slept. I call them the Lost Days. But as I look toward the end of my twenties, I don't want any more Lost Days.

I am not better, but I am okay with that. I am moving forward. I am healing, even if that means I'm not medically any better than I was a year and a half ago.

I have had so much support. My parents are amazing; my sister and my brother and cousins are my rock. My friends are steadfast and this community builds me up when I am lost. 

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Let's support each other. Give whatever you can to fight cancer. It takes so much. It is not a gift, and we must defeat it. 

I recommend the American Cancer Society and First Descents. Too Young for Cancer is also a good organization for young adults battling this disease. Give toward metastatic breast cancer and Ewing's Sarcoma. Give toward melanoma, or Hodgkin's and thyroid and pancreatic. We need advances. We need them now.

Link to donate to First Descents is here: http://tfd.firstdescents.org/site/TR?px=1004761&fr_id=1060&pg=personal

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Thank you all for inspiring me to keep on. Thank you for all your support these past six years.

I am so lucky. I am so grateful. 

I'll never forget the friends we lost and will lose. I'll always remember their fight and determination and I will call on that on days I am not up for living.

This is what it means to survive.

Lauren

My friend is dead. She has been dead since Thanksgiving. 

I am terrified of the monsters that roar inside of me, waiting for the right moment to strike. I hate the parallels in our stories. I hate the word cancer. I fucking hate seeing it everywhere. I get sweaty and nauseous. I fucking hate that word. Why does it have to be everywhere? Can't it be like You Know Who? Why do we have to say the word so much? Voldemort, cancer, Voldemort. It's put a trace on me, that word. It's everywhere.

I visited Lauren's mom with my old coworkers yesterday and at times the silence was thick with our own memories and recollections. The copier in the blue room where she told me she had melanoma. The ninth floor of 16 W 22nd Street, New York, NY. A place I'll never be again.

We talked about it, a lot. I was her "cancer mentor," we joked. We hated the word, we hated the smell of hospitals, we hated the shitty food and the steroids and the ways our bodies were carved and shaped into something we didn't recognize.

I miss my friend. I miss our little community. The two of us and a tie that would bond us forever.

Sometimes I see a really cheesy "beat cancer" ad and I want to laugh maliciously at it with her. We made fun of those things. 

We wanted to believe we were as real as we could be about cancer, but we were both terrified and sometimes we could not speak of it.

Some days I can't believe she's gone. I worry about the monsters. I feel guilty telling her mom I'm doing well because her daughter is dead.

No matter what my troubles, my pain, struggles, I get to live. I get to fall in love and eat and sing into my hairbrush and drink and tattoo my body and live. 

Lauren doesn't. All of her memories have been made. They're for us now. And it's so fucking unfair, because I never knew someone who wanted to live as much as she did.  I survived and some days I don't move from my bed. Lauren would understand but I should be doing more.

I have to live more, because she can't. I have to be kind and live big and write, like she always bugged me to. I need to write about cancer and the word and how heavy it hangs around your neck. 

I miss my friend. But I'm going to keep on. 

I'm going to Be Kind and Live Big.