Should I Quit My Day Job While Living With Cancer?

Laura Yeager is a two-time breast cancer survivor. Catch up on all of Laura's blogs here!

Cancer doesn’t have to strip you of everything. You can sometimes maintain your vocation as you’re being treated for this malady. Consider keeping your job and working around cancer treatments.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011, my psychologist told me not to quit my day job. She said that my part-time career as a writing teacher would keep my mind off the difficulty of being treated for cancer. Well, she was right.

Throughout my cancer experience, the students were wonderful; they seemed to respect me more because I was going through something very hard. And they didn’t stop having needs just because I had cancer. Those papers kept coming, and I had to keep reading them and grading them. As I went through surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments, I remained a writing teacher, as well as a cancer patient. This multi-tasking was good for my mind.

As I started to understand my plight, I started writing about it. I shared my cancer stories with my students. This was some of my best work, and the students responded to it. My personal writing freed them up to write about their own struggles and how they overcame them. We, both teacher and students, became works in progress, conquering our demons and living to talk about them.

Then, one day, when I was waiting to see my oncologist in an uninteresting waiting room, I saw a magazine that looked like something I should check into. It was called Cure Today. I picked it up and started reading. After about two seconds, I realized that this was a publication with which I truly connected. My first piece for Cure Today was called “Waiting Rooms,” and it was all about the places I’d waited to be treated for this disease. And voila, another career, that of cancer blogging, was invented.

As you can imagine, writing and teaching writing go hand in hand. Both of these part-time careers have sustained me as I’ve traveled the unchartered territories of trying to survive cancer.

Of course, there were difficulties along the way and days that I absolutely couldn’t make it into the classroom. On these low days, a fellow teacher and friend, Leslie, would sub for me. This made all the difference in being able to keep my day job. Leslie is one of those extraordinary people who can jump into any situation and somehow make it work. Equipped with verbal lesson plans from me, she taught my classes with aplomb. The students responded to her and didn’t complain about my absences.

But I couldn’t have kept my day job if I hadn’t had such supportive leadership under which I worked. My bosses and the administrators at my university, Kent State University at Stark, were amazingly helpful and allowed me to work for them while I was sick. They left it up to me. No one said, “Maybe you should take some time off.” They went with my plan of trying to stay afloat as a teacher and a writer, and you know what? I made it through the rough days and am now here to talk and write about them.

Students can be extremely sweet. At the end of my second breast cancer experience in 2016, they chipped in and bought me an enormous peanut butter cookie decorated with pink frosting that read, “Yay, no more cancer!” This was very touching. They had me pose next to it so that they could get a picture of me and the cookie. Then, we broke it into pieces, strange communion, and gobbled it down.

Yes, it was a good thing, the right thing not to quit my day job. If I had stopped teaching years ago, I might not have picked it back up. I can proudly say that cancer didn’t slay my career, nor did it slay me. I have good doctors and nurses; a supportive network of family, friends, and administrators; dozens of patient students; and God to thank for this wondrous outcome.

If I could offer you, readers of CURE, any advice, I’d suggest this: As you make your way through this cancer “thing,” if it’s all possible, don’t quit your day job. You’ll be much better off for it, as your vocation will nourish and challenge you in a good way. Balance the bad with the good. To quote Martha Stewart, “It’s a beautiful thing.”

This piece reflects the author’s personal experience and perspective as a breast cancer survivor. For medical advice, please consult your health care provider.

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