Five Ways Having Cancer in my 20’s Changed My Life for the Better

When I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the age of 24, my life plans were shaken up like the alphabet dice in a Boggle game and rearranged in accordance with some inscrutable order outside of my control.

Instead of leaving town for grad school as I had planned, I moved in with my dad and spent most of 2009 battling the “Big C,” while doctors used chemotherapy and proton therapy to shrink and render lifeless the 17-centimeter malignant tumor inside my chest cavity. Probably not anyone’s idea of a fun way to spend a year of their life, much less their 20's.

It was a difficult time, physically and emotionally. I lost my hair; my body and mind were on the steroid roller coaster much of the time; and toward the end of the 6–7 months of chemo, I struggled to keep on weight and was hospitalized with bleomycin toxicity.?I felt anxiety about the unknown and whether or not my life would continue, and if it did, what it would look like.

Challenging though it was, there was a great deal that my experience with cancer taught me. My experience was cancer was not just a series of lessons; it was, in fact, transformative. As the Fred DeVito quote plastered on a gym wall near you attests,?“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”?Here are five ways that cancer changed my life. For the better.

1. I learned the miracle of comfort that fur-lined socks truly are.

Okay, I know this seems like a trite or silly one, and it sort of is, but for a Taurus who is all about comfort and coziness, these veritable stress disintegrators have changed my relaxation practices forever. My mom, ever the nurturer, made sure that at every chemo treatment I had a cozy blanket and a pair of extra warm, fur-lined socks.

“Lazy socks,” while not super practical for everyday life as they don’t fit well inside most shoes, are perfect for times when you want to switch to “chill” mode. To this day, when I pull out a pair of faux fur-lined socks from my dresser drawer,?it’s a direct signal to my mind-body complex that it’s time to chill.?For this, I am grateful.

2.?I realized how amazing it is to be healthy and feel good.

When we are used to a relatively smooth ride on the road of health, it is easy to take our healthy state for granted. The simplest of things often go unnoticed when they are running well: The ability to take in air, unhindered; the absence of pain; a well functioning digestive system; the energy to meet the day and what it brings.

It’s hard to truly understand what an enormous fortune it is to have good health until you feel the pain of threatened health. Similarly, it’s all too easy to take the simple pleasure of just feeling good for granted. Spending a year battling cancer and the side effects of treatment gave me a deep and abiding appreciation for good health. Truly, every day is a gift: most especially the days on which I “just” feel good!

3.?I developed a deeper level of empathy with those who are enduring sickness.

Rarely do I have a hard time finding some point of connection between myself and another human being. By nature, I’ve always had an inclination toward empathy, or at least sympathy. However, until I was diagnosed with a serious illness, something as heavy as cancer felt so far from something that could ever happen to me, especially at my young age. Although I’d feel sympathetic when encountering or hearing of a person battling cancer, I just couldn’t quite wrap my head around their experience. It felt distant. Foreign.

Today, when I encounter someone going through a difficult illness, I feel deeply for them. I don’t just “feel bad” for them; I remember what it felt like to be there,?experiencing my mortality as a tenuous thing. I’ve made friends along the cancer journey, and I continue to make friends with both survivors and those in the throes of battle.?I rejoice with their victories and I mourn their difficulties. To be able to empathize on a deeper level with those going through sickness has deepened and enriched my inner life. Although it hurts sometimes, it feels good to care.

4.?I discovered that being a mother was something I desired.

At the time I was diagnosed, I had just graduated college & was planning on grad school. My parents had recently gotten divorced, I wasn’t in a serious relationship, and I was more than a tad skeptical about marriage, kids, and the whole wife/mother role, in general. It just didn’t feel like “me.” I liked my space. I liked my freedom. I didn't particularly like feeling vulnerable. I was an “independent woman.”

This is why it was all the more surprising that I felt deeply saddened when an oncologist’s assistant informed me that the chemotherapy treatment I would be receiving could result in my infertility and advised me to consider freezing my eggs. I remember very clearly the tiny office I sat in and how I felt I’d been punched in the gut. I wasn’t at a place in life where I fantasized about becoming a mother; however,?to be told the opportunity might be taken away from me revealed a truth that some part of me did want to be a mom.

After I got through treatment, started grad school, and resumed dating, I thought about my relationships a bit more seriously. Somewhere along the way, I had realized I wanted a husband, a family home, and a child or two. I wanted to experience all that life had to offer me.?I wanted to share my life with a family, all of us living and growing together.

Five years into remission from cancer, I gave birth to a beautiful daughter. Four years later, I gave birth to her younger sister. The mere existence of my daughters fills me with inexplicable joy, pride, and meaning. If my experience with cancer hadn’t ignited my survival instincts and maternal desires, I don’t know if or when these longings would have emerged.

5.?I was able to defuse the inner-pain-charged story I had been carrying around.

At the age of 24, I was at a point in my life where I felt I’d been cheated in some ways. I felt like I’d been taken advantage of and discarded, by multiple people. It had become a pattern and I was, in my mind, the victim. I wasn’t so much angry as I was sad, hurt, and disappointed in my life.

I tried various methods in an effort to rise above the inner pain I felt and the powerful pattern that was playing on repeat. These methods included a ten-day silent meditation, yoga, various retreats, and generally doing my best impression of a peace-loving “free spirit.”

Although these activities helped incrementally, the underlying feeling that my life was, in some major way, a “fail,” haunted me. Then I got cancer. The pain was physical, tangible, and it was literally strangling my life. It was during a dire moment at the hospital with bleomycin toxicity that those emotional hurts came up one last time.

Afflicted by an, as of yet, undiagnosed condition, I was struggling to simply get sufficient oxygen and put on weight. Suddenly, the hurts I’d been carrying came speeding to the surface and erupted. I don’t know if I was crying or talking, most likely a combination of both, but I remember my mom just telling me, in no uncertain terms, that?it was time to let that stuff go. And, amazingly, I did. I was able to release my old hang-ups that day, in a definitive way.

Today, I no longer see my life’s past or current experiences as some kind of unfair attack. What I do see when I look back and around me is?a tapestry of experiences designed to teach me & those around me.?I no longer feel hurt when I look back. What I feel, when I deeply look, is compassion.

I feel an enormous amount of compassion for myself and my shortcomings, as well as compassion for those with whom my path has intersected.

I have come to respect a mysterious, ironic, beautiful truth:?Somehow, we are all?learning?together. Through the muck and delights of this incredible experience and tremendous opportunity we call life, we are evolving, together.

Cancer as an Agent of Change

Having cancer in my 20’s took me in, chewed me up, and spit me back out, anew. An encounter with cancer was somehow the challenge life deemed appropriate to instigate potent change in my young life. I’m hopeful that this was my one and only battle with the beast of cancer.?At the same time, I’m grateful for the changes that were born by way of my cancer journey just as I am grateful for each day of my wondrous, amazing human life.