I was never afraid of turning 30, or of getting closer to it. Everybody is hotter in their 30s, and life is easier because you’re just too tired to care what people think, it’s basically the version of life we’re all dreaming of.
Now I’m 29, and 30 feels further away than ever. This June I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Colon Cancer. The stages are based on spread, mine has spread to my lungs. There’s no good way to talk about cancer, so I won’t try to do it well, it just is. I’m 29, I have cancer, and now I’m blogging about it. Why? No good answer to that on the cancer front, on the blog front – I like writing, I like not answering the same questions over and over again (and people have a lot of questions), and this seemed efficient.
Now for the questions that everybody has:
- What were the signs? Not many. Fatigue, general icky feelings, blood in stool just before diagnosis. Report symptoms to your doctor early and often and get screened.
- Are you in pain? Why would you ask me this? And no.
- How long do you have left? Do you have any tact? I have the same amount of time any of us have – forever and also maybe none, it’s not for us to know.
- Are you getting treatment? Yes. I’m 29, I’m otherwise perfectly healthy, I’m getting treatment.
- What treatment? Chemo – for my stage of cancer they do something called FOLFOX as first line, I’m going to do something called FOLFIRIFOX, which is similar but adds a second line treatment drug as well. We’re being aggressive with it. I’ve already started FOLFOX, and barring any issues, I’ll add the other drug soon.
- What about your hair? Once again insensitive. I will lose it once we switch from FOLFOX to FOLFIRIFOX. I’ll wear a wig, I’m vain.
- What symptoms are you having from the chemo? Such weird, weird questions to ask me. Mostly puking, nausea, tiredness, aversion to food, headaches, light sensitivity. One of the drugs gives me semipermanent neuropathy, cold hurts my hands and feet and makes them stop responding great, and I can’t eat or drink cold things. Treatment is every other week, though, so aside from the neuropathy the symptoms go away after a few days and I have a week of feeling normal.
- What’s the plan? Mostly to survive. Ideally the chemo shrinks the tumors and they’re able to remove, radiate, or burn whatever is left from there. The doctors are fairly confident they can get me to ‘NED’ (No Evidence of Disease).
- How can I help? Ben and I are doing okay money-wise, though of course insurance is the worst, but there’s no gofundme or anything at this time, here are some things that help, though:
- Recommendations: every other week I spend about 4 days laying in a dark room trying not to throw up, recommendations for shows, music, podcasts, books, etc. are really helpful.
- Company: similarly, it’s nice to hang out, on good and bad weeks, on the bad weeks, I really appreciate some phone calls, my favorite topics are: drama and gossip completely unrelated to me and funny and/or embarrassing things you recently did. Honestly this is one of my favorite things people have done for me.
- Gifts: again, not a need right now, but some people have insisted, so things that we appreciate are:
- Gift cards for food delivery or groceries
- Books
- Activities (coloring, crafting, especially things that can be done reclining)
- Cooked Meals (especially things that can be frozen – I can’t have red meat or lunch meat, and I try to avoid too much gluten)
- Donated time: obviously we’re not keeping up great at house work, so assistance with folding, mopping, dishes, etc. is a big help.
- What isn’t helpful? Nobody asks this but I wish they would:
- Being sad about it, obviously I’m bummed, your bummed, everybody is bummed, I’m a very fun and interesting person, but I don’t need you to tell me you’re bummed or bring that energy around.
- Acting like I’m actively dying – I get the instinct, but I’m actually not, it is very serious and very scary, but as of right now I am very okay.
- Asking for a lot of specifics – the diagnosis is cancer, getting into the details isn’t going to help anyone, knowing where it spread, why I got it, what mutations there are, none of those change anything at this point, so please don’t ask.
- Buying anything that says ‘fuck cancer’ or ‘cancer warrior’ or whatever. I’m still a person, and I still have a lot going on outside of a disease.
- Offering treatment suggestions – unless you have also gone through cancer and have helpful recommendations about resources, coping, or surviving chemo (in which case I am actually very interested in what you have to say), your suggestions aren’t very helpful. I have a great medical team made up of truly talented specialists working with me on everything from treatment to diet to whatever else ails me on a given day, I am topped out on advice (and no, I will not be cutting out all sugar, that’s a myth and sugar makes eating the insane amount of calories I need right now more bearable).
- Saying any of the following:
- “But you’re so young”
- “Oh your poor daughter/husband/other”
- “What’s your plan if you don’t survive”
- “My [whoever] had cancer, they died”
- “How much longer do you have”
The final question everybody always asks is “how are you” and the answer is I don’t know. It varies minute by minute. I want to believe everything will be fine, and I know nothing will ever be remotely the same again. Some doctors have a lot of hope, and some cry through my appointments. Some days I wake up sure I’ll live to be 90 and some days I’m not even sure I’ll make it to 30 (those days are mostly the ones I’m throwing up a lot). It’s not a poetic experience, it isn’t a blessing in disguise, and I’m not
goingthroughit 