real life

Why I didn't tell my friends about my cancer diagnosis.

This April, I’ll be celebrating two milestones – my 22nd birthday and my 2nd anniversary of having finished chemotherapy. Celebrating these milestones together can be a little odd, as it often feels like I’m simultaneously celebrating life and tragedy.

I cannot sugar coat it: being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at 19 is the most tragic thing that’s happened to me. When I felt that lump on the right side of my neck, the ‘c’ word didn’t come to mind. At the time, I was incredibly healthy and fit and when I presented myself to the first doctor, he shrugged the lump off as “some kind of muscle sprain.”

It was only after a few weeks, several doctors, many procedures, and countless scans that I was told by my oncologist that I had cancer.

People who know my story often thought the reason I had difficulty ‘dealing’ with and ‘accepting’ my diagnosis is because cancer is such a difficult illness to come to terms with. Although this is definitely true, I also had a difficult time conceptualising my situation because of how fast everything happened.

The same week I was diagnosed, I needed to start fertility preservation, and then more scans and blood tests were needed, and more appointments and consultations and then all of a sudden I was in the ward having my first cycle of chemotherapy.

If you have had chemotherapy, then you would know just how debilitating it can be. Over the six months I had it, it often felt more like torture than treatment. My chemotherapy regime was not only painful, but impaired my cognitive abilities.

Now, when I think back to treatment, everything is fuzzy and it feels like trying to remember a forgotten dream. Even the diary which I regularly wrote in during those six months is littered with unfinished lines where I was too tired and nauseous to continue writing.

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That time weighed heavily on me. It felt like everything was going so ‘well’ until cancer hit, and I tried to maintain the high as long as I could. In hospital I could accept I was a cancer patient, but outside I didn’t want cancer to be my life or to be me.

sarah pfister insight cancer
Sarah. Image: supplied.

I didn’t tell many friends about my diagnosis, as I didn’t want people to see me as weak, sick, fragile or terminally ill.

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Cancer patients are either portrayed to be really melancholic, on the verge of passing away, or we have to be super happy once the treatment has finished - a martyr for other young people. It only seems to be one or the other. I think because of movies like My Sister’s Keeper, society believes that the cancer becomes your identity, which is not how it is in real life. So when I did start telling people, I felt some of them started to only associate me with cancer but this is not who I am, but an experience I had.

Cancer was and always will be a large part of my life. For the rest of my life I will need to be scanned to confirm remission, and I am still not sure how the illness and treatment will affect my fertility and future health. However, I refuse to let cancer be my identity because I am so much more than my illness.

"I am so much more than my illness." Image: Supplied.
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Before cancer I had things I wanted to do like be awarded a Juris Doctor, see the Northern Lights and create incredible experiences for myself and the people I care about.

After cancer, things have not changed. In fact, I now want to do even more. Coming to face with your own mortality deeply changes the way you look at things. I have realised how special it is to be alive and I intend to do as much as I can.

I want to acknowledge that not letting cancer be my identity might be easier for me than it would be for others. I may have lost my hair and have scars from surgery and procedures, but other young adolescent cancer survivors have lost a lot more. Some have lost limbs, senses, physical abilities and even their life trying to battle this terrible illness.

Nevertheless, I want to let you the reader know, that we are not defined by our cancer. So many of us have done incredible things after treatment and a few of us are even working hard on being advocates for other young people with a cancer diagnosis.

This April I will be blowing out the candle on two milestones, and it will certainly be a celebration.