About Complicated Cancer

I was almost thirteen years old when fate/the Grim Reaper/the Devil himself flipped a coin and it landed terminal-illness side up. Leukemia is a cancer of the blood. This essentially means that my cancer was… well…. everywhere.

Additionally, since leukemia typically develops in children under ten, I was a high-risk patient. 

Yes, apparently some terminally-ill patients can be more terminally-ill than others. (This is the social ladder of the medical world. It’s truly thrilling)

This high-risk status meant I received twice as much chemo as the younger leukemia patients did. My treatment called for two-and-a-half years of high-dose chemotherapy and steroids. It was the most intensive chemo regimen that any person of any age with any cancer could possibly receive.

According to my doctor, the amount of chemo I received would have killed a normal adult, and likely had the ability to kill every animal in the Denver zoo.

This treatment DID NOT go well. While the chemo was effective in killing the leukemia cells that made up a good portion of my blood, it had detrimental effects on the rest of my body.

You can read more about that story here if you wish. It is not a fun tale to read, but I encourage that you read it so that you can get to know me better.

However, here’s all you need to know in this moment: during chemotherapy, I experienced just about every single side-effect in the book, and then a few additional, unexpected ones (I am just a rebel like that).

Yes, that’s right. I was a cancer patient who made the doctors have to add to the list of chemo side-effects.

In essence, I get exactly how devastating cancer and chemotherapy can be. And I want to share all of those experiences to help you guys.

If you want to learn more about my life post-chemo, check that out here.

Don’t get me wrong, I spent YEARS trying to run from what happened to me. Figuratively and literally.

But I reached a point where I realized that I couldn’t run from my past. Instead I had to turn and face it.

Now—in my early twenties, 8 years after my cancer diagnosis—I am ready to talk about my experiences with battling cancer and what my recovery has looked like.

While Complicated Cancer has an emphasis on young adult cancer (as that is my area of expertise), everything on my blog has universal applications to anyone of any age who is battling cancer.

 

Why did I create Complicated Cancer? There are 4 main reasons:

 

                1) To tell my story. I want the world to know who I am and what I have been through. (At the very least, if everything goes horribly wrong, this blog can be my legacy)

I also hope you are all able to get to know me through my writing and photography. (I.E. The majority of the photos anywhere on this blog are my own)

 

                2) To spread awareness about cancer and what it is truly like to go through it. 

This kind of information can benefit cancer patients, their caretakers, and generally anyone who has no clue how to relate to someone with cancer.

 

But more importantly:

 

                3) To support, encourage, and advise other people who are battling cancer, supporting a loved one who is a warrior, or trying to recover post-chemo treatment.

I am here in any way that I can to support all of you.

 

                4) To let anyone battling cancer know that they are not alone in what they are going through and what they are experiencing.

That answer is simple: The people who survive cancer don’t want to talk about it. And I don’t blame them. Either you don’t live to share your story, or you spend the rest of your life trying to forget one of the worst things that ever happened to you. Sharing your experiences is like reliving a nightmare.

In short: it is next to impossible to find a full-fledged personal account of what it is like to battle cancer, endure chemotherapy, and try to recover from the whole experience. (This kind or search makes finding a needle in a haystack look cute)

But this inevitably means it is easy for cancer patients or survivors (like me!) to feel alone in their struggles. We can feel like an abnormality—something that no one else is able to understand or relate to. We can feel this way even with other cancer patients. Why?

Because: unless someone is open about their experiences or their struggles, you don’t know that they are struggling.

When I had cancer, I needed more resources than I had. I needed someone who could do more than tell me what the common side effects of chemo were and empathize as a pain professional. I needed personal details about how chemo would change my entire life, information about how it would feel to go through chemotherapy, advice on how I was supposed to cope with all the challenges and losses I faced, and detailed advice on what the mental and emotional repercussions of chemotherapy were and how to handle it.

I needed someone to validate what I was feeling and experiencing and confirm that it was normal.

 

Doctors and therapists couldn’t do enough.

I needed to talk to someone who had lived through it. But I couldn’t find any person with cancer willing/able/alive enough to talk to or read about. So, I was left to hopelessly wander, blindfolded and crippled, through my labyrinth.

And I’m 99.9% sure that someone set the Minotaur loose in there as well!!!

But as I said, finding this kind of information is rare. You are left to imagine that you are alone in carrying an incredibly heavy weight.

For this reason, I want to share all the details of my experiences so that people can know and understand what it is REALLY like to battle cancer and be given an accurate idea of how it can feel to face certain cancer-related challenges.

People take comfort in being connected to others who understand what they are feeling or thinking. And everyone battling cancer needs and deserves as much support as possible.

Those battling cancer or trying to recover after treatment are facing some of the most difficult challenges they will ever face.

The physical and emotional short and long-term side effects of chemotherapy range from mild annoyances to life-threatening trials. To read more about the side-effects of chemotherapy, visit my Understanding Cancer page.

No one should be caught unaware or have to face any of these things alone.

For years, I struggled more than necessary with the short and long-term effects of my chemotherapy. No one told me what to expect, no one had advice, and no one knew how to encourage me. I just had to take challenges as they came, figure them out on the go, and learn to overcome them (with a freaking LOT of trial and error).

In addition, I felt incredibly alone. There are millions of other people out there with cancer, but so many of them keep their stories to themselves. Cancer is like the Voldemort of the real world. The majority of people avoid even saying the word. Even fewer are willing to talk about their own personal experiences with cancer.

If a blog like this had existed, it would have spared me a great deal of time, loneliness, and unnecessary suffering.