Share Your Story

I didn’t let my cancer diagnoses get in the way of living life.

I turned my cancer-related depression and frustration with the health care system into something positive for others with the disease.

Looking back on my breast cancer experience, I contemplate what it means to thrive.

My healthy body was hijacked by an enemy (ovarian cancer) launching my continuous fight against the disease.

After undergoing treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, I’m living my life with cautious optimism, and will always seek out joy.

Cancer tried to kill me, but I came back even stronger than ever.

The medical world has antidotes for many of the issues that arise from cancer treatments, so I learned to speak up about what I was experiencing.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer, I became a fierce advocate for myself.

I underwent cancer treatments during my lunch breaks at work. Looking back, I wish I took some time off.

After I held my hand as my mom died, I wondered who would hold mine as I went through cancer.

While I’m usually a private person, it’s important to me to share my three bouts with cancer so that others will learn their bodies and their family history.

Cancer made me more empathetic, as well as an advocate for the HPV vaccine.

Despite my mother and grandmother’s history with the disease, I never thought I would one day receive a colon cancer diagnosis.

I pretend I’m at a spa day as an oncology nurse in a hazmat suit unhooks me from the intravenous drip machine.

As I face the end of my life due to metastatic colorectal cancer, I’m preparing my loved ones for my death — from determining who gets my stuff to writing my eulogy and making my memorial service playlist.

I was working hard and feeling burnt out, until a cancer diagnosis forced me to slow down and reevaluate the important things in life.

After I was diagnosed with anal cancer, doctors wanted me to get an colostomy bag, but I refused. Later on, I had to voice my concern about a drug that could improve my chances for survival.

When doctors told me that there was no more they could do for my stage 4 lung cancer, I refused to believe them, and wish other patients did the same.

Prior to my breast cancer diagnosis, my only goal in life was for my son to turn 16 so he could drive me to and from the local bars. Now I can’t help but think that my cancer was meant for me to change my life.

After my dad died of colorectal cancer, I knew I had to continue advocacy work in his honor.

The way I saw it was that I could either die from cancer, or from the side effects from the clinical trial. It was a difficult decision to make, but I am glad I chose it.

A stage 3 colorectal cancer survivor shares her story of being diagnosed right before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beyond its lessons, cancer has also brought, along with the fear and anxiety, a conviction to empower myself and to create a life that I deserve: One in which joy can triumph over that fear and that anxiety.

After I was diagnosed with cancer, I started to feel like a burden to my loved ones. So, I wrote a letter urging them to continue on with other aspects of their lives.

After my mom died of colon cancer, I became an advocate with the hopes that fewer people would be lost to the disease.

After being diagnosed with colorectal cancer, my ostomy — which I named Toodles — opened up a world of body positivity for me.

After being diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer, I made it a mission to share my story and help others.

My dad was always strong willed, and I think that helped him face aggressive, late-stage cancer.