Dear Cancer
Each year we ask the AYA cancer community to submit letters to cancer to express their feelings about how cancer has changed their lives. People explore an array of emotions in these letters, including anger, sadness, gratitude, and hope.
Want to submit an article or write your own letter to cancer? Click Here.
Dear Cancer, You Were A Dictator
Dear Cancer,
It feels as if you have been with me longer than six months, and that is quite literally because you have. You snuck in and allowed my body to become your ally, to get what you needed to survive. You told my physical being that it would be okay and you wouldn’t cause any problems.
Read More...Dear Cancer, You Don’t Care
Dear Cancer,
Not that anything in this world could have prepared me, but I never saw you coming. I was healthy. I wasn’t sick. I was able to do everything that I had always done. I have to give it to you, I’m rarely surprised by things, but you gave me the biggest surprise of my life. I never saw you lurking in the shadows just waiting to take charge of my life as I knew it.
Read More...Dear Cancer, You’ve Taken Enough From Me
Dear Cancer,
I write this letter to you to inform you that you may want to reconsider your approach. For me, you came on too strong, out of nowhere, and wanted to be the center point of my life. These are not qualities or characteristics that I look for, particularly in any aspect of my life that I am going to share everything with. You brought me to my knees and held me in a very dark place in the beginning and for quite a while after my diagnosis. I am writing to tell you to get lost and to stay gone. FOREVER. You may not understand why, so I have outlined some things for you.
Read More...Dear Cancer, Keep Your Distance
Hey Cancer,
I can see you looking at me.
Stay back, across the street, stay steady.
It’s been two years.
I still feel you crawling under my skin
after kicking you out of me.
Dear Cancer, You Taught Me Loss and Light
Dear Cancer,
For a long time, I thought you only came into other people’s homes. You certainly would never enter mine and wreak havoc. Until you did. When I was fifteen you filled my home and apparently my dad’s bloodstream as well. Leukemia. When we told people the news they would cry, and I never understood why. What’s wrong? This won’t take him down. Do you know my dad? He is as tough as nails!
Read More...Dear Cancer, My Life Looks A Little Different Now
Dear Cancer,
If I would have written this letter a year ago, I’d have said you ruined my life. A year ago I was regularly having flashbacks of going through aggressive treatment for Primary Mediastinal Large B Cell Lymphoma during the winter months of 2020 and 2021. A year ago I was still reeling from my third cross-country move in as many years. A year ago, my body was still getting rid of all the toxins from the aggressive chemotherapy regimen I was put through. A year ago, I still felt so damn misunderstood by my friends and family.
Read More...Dear Cancer, Thank You for Teaching Me Patience
Dear Cancer,
I would often think of you before I knew you. When I was a child, I would think to myself, “I was one of six children. What are the odds that none of us got cancer?” As I got into my teenage years, the question then became “Which one of us?”
Read More...Dear Cancer, You Try to Take Away
Dear Cancer,
I have honestly feared you for as long as I can remember. A feeling of you meeting me along the way was consistently looming over me. So much so, that I can recall telling friends and family that I felt you would come for me, and I wondered if you already had.
Read More...Dear Cancer, You Took the Best Parts of Me
Cancer,
I cannot even begin to describe the absolute void that lives within me because of you. I have been physically rid of you for almost six years now, and yet somehow you still manage to wreak havoc on my soul.
Read More...Dear Cancer, You Stick to Me Like Glue
Dear Cancer,
My word, you really are a tricky little one. I don’t remember a life before you or without you. You seem to love to stick to me like glue. First popping out your dirty little head in 1998 when I was only four, taking my eye and my trust in my own body.
Read More...