The Latest

In October of this year, I will have had cancer for 13 years. In the beginning, I was determined not to let it change me or my life. I saved my eggs to preserve reproductive possibilities, had a double mastectomy, and tried to take the least amount of time off possible. I worked hard to get right back to my regular life and routine. I remember feeling very proud of this "determination" because I idealized "strength" and willfulness, and other people thought it was awesome. Everyone told me how impressive I was, that I stayed in school and came right back to work. It was very reinforcing and helped me to ignore the terrible anxiety I was having all the time. I just pushed myself, got accolades, intellectualized my experiences, and dove into research about my condition. This distracted me, and I felt a little better. But I was having nightmares at the time that would wake me up in the middle of the night in a panic attack. It was an existential fear of dying, and when I was sleeping, I could neither distract myself with busyness nor ignore my subconscious, and I was being flung awake at night, feeling that I had stopped breathing and was dying. The dread of the idea of becoming nothing in death was so frightful that I couldn't ignore it. I went and did EMDR, which is an evidence-based type of psychotherapy to support people in dealing with and healing from emotional distress and trauma symptoms. It worked, and I kept on my merry way but I felt increasingly isolated from other people, misunderstood, and angry. On the tamoxifen that they put me on at the time, I began having mental health struggles, such as intense suicidal ideation. Apparently, that particular drug, when given to pre menopausal women, can have that side effect, but I was so intensely stressed at baseline anyway that I'm not sure it would have mattered. I was repressing a lot, and it was going to have to come out somehow. My oncologist suggested I see a psychiatrist, which I did, but I refused medication and sought out breathwork and meditation as a means to cope. It helped some, but I eventually had to get off of tamoxifen because I was declining mentally. So after 3 1/2 years, not the recommended 5-10, I got off of it.

In 2019, my long-time therapist, Marcy (The best therapist in the world), died of metastatic breast cancer. It was an awful thing to watch. I struggled to cope with this, but had no time for my grief. I was at UCLA in a very rigorous program and working at several different salons. She called me from NY toward the end to tell me what was happening. She was so scared. She didn't sound quite right either, not like herself at all. I didn't know what to say, so I said something stupid that I'll always wish I hadn't said. I loved her so much. She walked me through some of the worst shit ever. I just wanted to be there for her in return, and I couldn't find the right thing to say; I didn't have the experience or wisdom. I couldn't comfort her. I felt so helpless. A feeling I would come to be very familiar with in my own journey. A feeling I would fight to the death to not accept.

I had my own recurrence shortly after that in 2020. I started having localized symptoms in my breast in the summer of 2018. I can't remember now if it was before or after I got off the meds, honestly. But I reported it immediately to my oncologist, who did the standard workup and found nothing. Similar to the first time I had cancer, I had progressing symptoms and reported them all to my doctors to the tune of "Stacy, there is nothing there", over and over again. I tried to ignore it; I wanted to believe that there was nothing there so badly, but my symptoms nagged at me, and in 2020, right as COVID was breaking out, I had my plastic surgeon cut me open to look. Lo and behold, there was cancer again, only that time it turned out to be metastatic cancer, which was a whole other ballgame that included the dreaded chemotherapy and radiation. I think I actually shut down a little bit in that moment. I had just graduated from UCLA and completed several trainings in coaching, crisis management, and trauma over the summer. I was ready to start working and get my life going again, but I was being knocked back for what felt like the perpetual again of a cosmic force that hated me. Over the course of just over a year, I went through treatment with IV chemo, radiation, and had my ovaries removed. My mind felt like cottage cheese, and I was too sick all the time to really think much. Strangely, I was in my forties by that time, and becoming devoid of estrogen actually improved my mental health slightly for a little bit. I became less sensitive and was slightly slower to react to life, but slowly, over time, I became depressed. Depression is not a baseline state for me in response to stress. Anxiety, yes, anger, yes, but depression had never really been my go-to. Even when I was feeling suicidal on tamoxifen, I wasn't depressed; I was overstimulated and had issues with emotion regulation, but I wasn't depressed; I just wanted relief. This was different, though. Even though I was still working during that time, it was COVID, and I was doing a lot less. I was in bed a lot or on the couch. Erik had to keep working, and we were cut off from other people because I was immunocompromised. I was alone a lot, too ill to do much, so I was bored. I got weaker, more isolated, and was having TONS of unmanageable side effects to chemo, and eventually, the reality of what had happened and what it actually meant sank in. I was incurable now. I would most likely eventually die from this. My body would never be the same. Having a family was off the table for sure. Sex off the table. Losing my breasts was really hard, but losing my reproductive organs was really painful because it represented the last connection to my femininity, to motherhood, to my youth, to sexuality, to life and because of how the drugs and treatment affected my particular vagina and other organs I would have a lot of problems to manage that make a person feel dead inside, dull, leathered and weighed down somehow, different from others and so invisible. You can't walk around telling everyone that your cervix fell out of your vagina in a bathroom stall, or that you have such terrible vaginal atrophy that you bleed and tear easily when you wipe, that you can't have sex with your boyfriend anymore, and that you have to be so careful that you don’t get bacterial vaginosis cause your vagina can’t clean itself. That you have to be very mindful to look for symptoms of bladder and kidney infections that can lead to sepsis, or that you've had pneumonia 3 times due to low white blood cells, or about the seromas, hematomas, and how your implants keep falling out of your chest. You can’t really dive into the grief of your life changing or ending, your body changing and having new limitations, the incredible infuriating lymphedema management, the scars, the financial strain, pressure to keep up with everyone else, the fear of dying, and so many other things because it’s overwhelming. It scares people, it confuses them, they don't know what to say, it's depressing, and essentially, as the cancer survivor, you have to learn to hold this in as best you can. To sanitize it, and to respond to most questions with "I’m good, thanks," even though you want to scream and unload it all everywhere. Trust me, I did this, and if you want to maintain your relationships and their balance, it’s best to say less. This is so isolating and hard to do.

Eventually, in 2024, I was rediagnosed with mets to my brain. I had been complaining for two long years, since a fainting episode I had in 2022, followed by another round of escalating symptoms. My reports faced dismissal after dismissal of my symptoms and complaints. I was ignored and told, for probably the 30 thousandth time, that I had anxiety and needed medication. But I was right, AGAIN. Only this time, the mistake was fatal, I was told. They said I had likely weeks, maybe 2-3 months to live and to get my affairs in order. Which I did, fully expecting to die, and yet somehow I remained in disbelief. I was in grad school at CSUN at the time. I took the summer off to go through brain radiation. I knew they said I was going to die, and mentally I accepted it, though I was having an out-of-body experience in response to the stress of it all, but I just didn’t feel like I was dying. I still felt my life force present and aware in my body. I was confused and also so angry that this was happening to me. I decided in that moment that I would refuse to die. That no doctor was going to tell me what my body would or would not do, and that I was going to live until I decided otherwise, and that that was the end of it.

It’s now June of 2026. I’m still alive. I’ve graduated from my master’s program and considering the situation… I’m doing quite well. I don’t know if my willfulness kept me alive, if it’s divine intervention or a mistake. I look back on the last 13 years, and so much has happened that I can’t even conceptualize it into a manageable story. What I’ve come to see about myself, though, is the need to be heard, and the habit I’ve had of going to the wrong people and places to do it. Whether in my personal life, professional life, or medical life, my voice seems to fall on deaf ears, ears that don’t understand, don’t validate, don’t honor, and don’t take me seriously. I’ve had to wonder how these categories of my life are connected. In my journey with cancer, I have always related it to a larger spiritual phenomenon. I’ve looked at the struggles I’ve had and wondered how I could have manifested this disease and again I come back to the refusal to hear myself and to grieve all the things that I’ve needed to grieve in this life instead of violating myself in the service of holding on to something that was not meant for me, would never be what I wanted it to be, or people who’s limitations I’ve internalized as my lack of value or worth. That I spent my life force energy railing against other people’s inadequacies in my relationship with them instead of accepting and grieving that sometimes you have to let go of your idea of someone and/or something and to accept with grace the truth in its place. In all of this, I reject myself, deplete myself, and deny myself. Realizing this yet again today, I wondered, how many times would I need to come back to this before I realize that in order to heal, I have to have an ever-deepening self-acceptance and letting go, along with a new way to see that my anger is really avoidance of pain, disappointment, and sadness. That love is the only answer, and comprehension and the willingness to grieve and let go is the way. Like they say in many 12-step programs… “we must cease fighting everything and everyone…for by this sanity will return…”.

I want to thank my friend Allison for the beautiful conversation today. She doesn’t have social media, so she won’t see this, but I am so grateful to have been given, in this divine moment of healing and grace, a place to be seen.