F*** Cancer (stories from a twenty-something survivor)

10. Telling Others

The decision of if, when, and what to tell people about your cancer diagnosis can be a stressful one.

My immediate family was very respectful of my privacy and asked me what, if anything, they should tell people. At first we kept it pretty vague (partly because we ourselves didn't really know what was going on) and only told those who needed to know, bosses, teachers, stuff like that. I appreciated that opportunity to tell my story the way I was comfortable with in my own time.

When I did finally decide to make a social media announcement, I decided that the day before I published that, I needed to get in contact with my close friend from high school and message them personally so they wouldn't be caught off guard while casually scrolling. If you're wondering why I felt the need to do this, it's sadly simple: we had lost one of our group members to cancer barely one year before my diagnosis.

I wasn't sure how they would take it, and I just kept imagining one of them scrolling through their feed while somewhere public and having to deal with that at work or something. I did not want that.

The overall response was supportive, but also rightfully... scared. I mean, let's be honest, losing one friend out of a group of about ten or so to cancer before any of us are old enough to drink is traumatizing enough. The possibility of losing a second is downright unfair.

Our group really drew the short stick, because while I was looking one of my friends up I discovered that they had been diagnosed with a different cancer around the same time I had. That makes 3 people, 3 cancers, 1 group.

What the fork, man.

As for literally everyone else, I made a general post to let people know what was going on because I did not want to have to tell every single person who was curious what was going on.

After a few weeks, I decided to make a public facebook page so that my parents' friends who knew me and my extended family that I didn't really know could keep up if they wanted to. I also made the separate page so I could keep most of the cancer stuff off my personal page. I didn't want to be inundating my FB friends with cancer stuff if they didn't want to know. I provided the link to the new page and then kept it separated (I think I may overthink things a lot, I'm always worried about other people's reactions to what I post).

One nice thing about having the separate page is that it's kind of a time capsule/story telling of my journey all in order. I don't post often anymore, but I guess that could be seen as a good thing. No more treatment = no more treatment updates that's math :)

I still don't know how to broach the subject in everyday life with regular people.

I remember, I went back to one of my other doctors a while after treatment (I still had short hair) and the doctor walked in and complimented my new hair style and what came out my mouth was: "Thanks, I had a lot of chemo."

Like what the actual fork, brain. That's what you decide to go with?!

Another time, almost two years after transplant, somehow the topic of wearing hats came up in a little group of us as we waited for class to start and I said something about having a bunch of hats or something. One of the girls was along the lines of "why's that?" and my response was "I had cancer." And it got awkward real fast and I stumbled over how "it was nearly two years ago" and "I'm totally fine now" while silently begging them not to be weird about it.

So, yeah, I do not have good advice on how to tell people about having cancer when you get back to "normal" life.

I honestly appreciate it when people can take it in stride and keep talking to me like a normal person. I don't tell you this so you can feel sorry for me; I tell you so you can have some context to where I'm coming from and my life experience.

-100 Bad Days by AJR

February 4, 2021