I have decided to quit cancer.
Not the science. Not the treatment that keeps me here. I am not walking away from medicine or survival. I am done with the identity of cancer. The way it tries to claim my life. The way it wants to be my whole story.
Cancer is a job now, and I intend to quit.
Before this, I worked in a lot of places and met a lot of people. Major broadcasters. Education giants. Retail legends. Scrappy start-ups. Jokesters. Geniuses. Hustlers. Starry-eyed dreamers. I built things. I moved fast. I said yes to new ideas. I rarely stayed still.
That restlessness has been a blessing and a curse. I am independent. Curious. ADHD. Probably a little on the spectrum. I love to learn. I test limits to see if I can build or create something new. I avoid anything that could get me physically hurt, but otherwise, I will try almost anything.
New foods.
New books.
New shows.
New tech.
New people.
New workouts.
New jobs.
New treatments.
Money has been the one area I have not figured out…yet. But I’m working on it.
Then cancer. It sticks, even when I am tired of learning about it, writing about it, or trying to explain it. It doesn't disappear (yet) just because I want it to. It’s like any other avoided or unwanted task.
Sometimes I waste time thinking about what might have been if I had stayed put at one of those safe, well-established companies. Sometimes I think about the fact that I never bought special cancer insurance like my ex-husband did. I am not proud of those moments, but they happened. I did not plan for cancer. (I may not have really planned at all! Yikes.)
For years, I believed that as long as I stayed clear of addiction, I could always pull myself out of anything. I thought clarity and energy would be enough. I quit alcohol. Three years later, I was being wheeled into an operating room for emergency brain surgery to begin treating Stage IV melanoma.
It was not because I ignored symptoms. In August of 2024, I felt a lump in my right armpit. I got an appointment within days. For reasons that were both understandable and maddening, it took until October to get the official diagnosis. Days later, a tumor in my brain bled, and this began.
I joke that I quit drinking and then started cancer. It is only a joke. I am grateful I do not have to figure out how to manage both.
What I have had to do is learn how to live again.
I have always been fiercely independent. People with more degrees might call it trauma. Maybe. Any traumas I have lived are ones of privilege, but the independence is real. It has shaped me. So has curiosity.
Cancer forced me to stop and rebuild. It turned the hospital into a second home. Initially, every appointment felt unbearable. I could hardly manage the drive there and back, even as a passenger. Now I walk the blocks of this sprawling Boston medical campus on my own. I no longer feel alone there. It is safe because I know the maze and I know the people.
Doctors with impossible schedules wear my Melanoma Cancer Shark stickers on their coats. Nurses and techs smile when I hand them a sticker, officially adding them to the shiver. (A shiver is what you call a group of sharks.) And my shiver is a fierce, unlikely family helping me bite back.
That is the heart of it. This is just another job. Fortunately, for me, I enjoy working.
Every job I have ever had has ended. I built, learned, worked like hell, made lifelong connections, and moved on.
Cancer will be no different. I plan to leave it with the shiver still fully intact.
