u/Ava_The_Avacado

A few days shy of a year.
The 12.5cmX13.2cmX12.8cm mass in my chest, that was compressing my heart from beating properly, compressing the bottom half of my left lung almost giving me a collapsed lung, pressing on my spine giving me the most terrible back pains.
Is now the size of a blueberry, with no detectable cancerous activity.

After a pic line in my neck and my arm, 2 chest tubes to drain fluids, 4 biopsies, so many PET and CT scans, 3 different immunotherapies, around 12 chemotherapies, and a round of proton therapy radiation. I have no more cancer.

I’m officially an 18 year old, about to graduate high school in a week, without cancer.

This whole journey has been hard, emotionally, and physically. I lost friends, realized you can’t always trust family. But in time of need, the people who care and matter most show through.

I have had to fight with school administrators, doctors, nurses, people.
But in the end, I realized I can’t always have everyone defend me, I needed to stand up for myself too and grow my own voice, no one knows my body more than me.

In a way, I feel this part of my life has prepared me for the rest of my life, no more being the shy kid who lets everyone make decisions for her, puts everyone else above her own needs, who won’t advocate for herself cuz it’s “probably not that bad.”

I’m more than ever excited to say, I USED to have cancer.

I was diagnosed almost a year ago, and since the diagnosis more stuff has happened since medically at least. And now whenever the slightest thing is wrong I think the worst and get worked up, my anxiety comes back, I panic think the worst is happening but most the time it winds up being just something small.

This past month I’ve received a lot of good news, the blood clot in my arm is now gone, I don’t have to do anymore radiation, my tumor is 2.5cm by 3cm and it is LOOKING LIKE it’s no longer cancerous but they need to have a discussion with the tumor board on Monday to confirm it.
I feel like I’m just waiting for something to go wrong.. cuz everytime I got my hopes up, I had to do more treatment, everytime something good happened something worse followed soon after.

Like in my chart were able to see the results from my last scan were looked at, but we’re just waiting for the doctor to call Monday about it.

I woke up with like a tickle in my throat the other day and I panicked I’m getting sick and I can’t get sick cuz my white blood cell counts are low. But it soon went away. I’m on a medication so I don’t get my period cuz I’m a blood loss risk currently and I woke up to some break through and I’m panicking profusely and my mom’s telling me i probably just forgot to take the dose last night (I take one pill in the morning one at night) so we doubled up this morning and it’s going away.
I have never had such bad anxiety until I got cancer. And idk what to do, and I want these feelings to go away, or at least other people understand how and why I’m feeling these things