Tag: Survivor

Cancer Takes A Village

Reading Time: 3 minutes My name is Elena Del Carmen and I am a mesenchymal chondrosarcoma survivor. At the age of 25, in October 2020, between my son’s fourth birthday party and my daughter’s

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Resilience and Courage

Reading Time: 3 minutes I am a childhood leukemia survivor, having been diagnosed at the age of 11. I’ve thankfully been cancer-free since 2007 but I currently suffer from a number of late effects

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Now I Know My IBC

Reading Time: 6 minutes Trigger warning: Suicidal Ideation “I’m sorry but this looks like stage III, Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC).” Those were the words that sprung out of my doctor’s lips that ordinary November

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One In a Million

Reading Time: 3 minutes It started with a small, hard bump under my hair. I found it when I was around eight years old. I showed my mom, who immediately took me to the

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Every Moment

Reading Time: 2 minutes Wow. My cancer story… I was the girl that was always just a bit sick growing up. I graduated in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, but that

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What I Wish I Would Have Known

Reading Time: 2 minutes I was just 29 years old when I was diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, Stage 2, hormone positive with a BRCA2 genetic mutation after finding a lump on a self-breast

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My Fight With ALL

Reading Time: 4 minutes In May of 2021, when I was 30, my wife, two young children and I flew from Chicago on a trip to visit my wife’s cousins and my brother and

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