In 2014, as a 19-year-old sophomore in college, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). After two years of suffering from a mystery illness, I finally had answers; my itchy feet, night sweats, frequent infections, and shooting pain all snapped into place with a cancer diagnosis.
I called all of my closest friends and packed my bags.
I’d moved 3,000 miles for college, and traveled all the way back home — Los Angeles to Boston — for treatment. Next up would be six months of ABVD chemotherapy, known to be very effective and very unpleasant. Isolated and scared, I started a Tumblr blog. Presciently, one of my first reposts said, “May this suffering serve to awaken compassion.”
Now that it’s been 10 years, I can tell other young adults what the first decade of survivorship looked like for me. I was lucky my hospital, Dana Farber, prepares young adults for the fact that there is no “going back to normal” after cancer treatment. Instead, they support cancer patients as they pave the way for a new normal.
My new normal, health-wise, was complex. My 20s were impacted by damaged lungs, PTSD, anorexia, peripheral neuropathy, and other complications of illness and treatment. But my new normal was also motivating; I was enraged by so much of the inequity I’d seen and more empathetic and passionate than ever.
Cancer survival radicalized me, and it made me into the person I am today. My anger fueled participation in The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Light The Night (LTN) walk and doing a yearly campaign to help people sign up for the bone marrow registry (we've even had two matches!). My Tumblr turned into a career as a writer, and I wrote for my school paper, The Daily Trojan, under a pseudonym before publishing my own writing in five publications. Now, I study political communications and work to help advocacy groups communicate about social issues with the public. Knowing what it’s like to have your health care impacted by political policy, I fight fiercely.
People often call me “resilient.” That resilience is driven by a flame inside me, knowing that I fought hard to be here. So, I keep at it — for my mental health, for my individuality, for my community. And I advocate for a world where people don’t have to fight so hard to survive.
I wouldn’t trade the light inside me that cancer sparked for the world. May our suffering serve to awaken compassion.
Eva
Hodgkin lymphoma (HL)
