30 Years Cancer Free
Today marks 30 years since a really bad day.
I was 21. The diagnosis of brain cancer came over a blinking answering machine in my parent’s bedroom after 6 months of crippling headaches, the disintegration of my left hand’s fine motor skills, dizziness, fainting, and slurred speech. (Oh – and a shit ton of misdiagnoses)
There was barely an internet to search. There were no young adult survivorship programs to call. I had no community that understood what happens after treatment ends when you are not 8 or 80 years old.
In fact, when you come to think of cancer in the mid-1990s, we kind of all just died back then. I mean, look at Debra Winger in Terms of Endearment. That was the playbook.
But I didn’t.
I’ve now watched three decades of impossible become ordinary—and it’s been the greatest terrible privilege.
The Breast Cancer Wars turned rage into research.
LIVESTRONG took survivorship mainstream (and yellow.)
Stupid Cancer (my legacy) gave a generation its voice.
I became the country’s first healthcare podcaster because patients needed a megaphone, not a waiting room. And now I proudly evolve my passion into an American patient rights activist.
The problems we have today? They’re better problems.
In 1996, the struggle was staying alive long enough to actually have struggles. Today we fight insurance denials, prior authorization dumbfuckery, the death of cancer research funding, and a system that still treats patients like line items.
These are the problems of people who survive.
...Of people who vote.
...Of people who are done being quiet.
19M cancer survivors. 20M cancer caregiver. We are the largest bipartisan single-issue voter bloc this country has never organized.
Until now. (Don’t touch that dial.)
I’m not celebrating survival. I’m celebrating what survival made possible: a movement that this country deserved. And I am celebrating all of you.
2026 is the Year of the Patient. The sick shall inherit the ballot.
If you’ve been in this fight since Clinton ‘s first term, drop your story below. And if this resonates, a repost puts it in front of someone who needs to see it.
Are you new here? My condolences and my thanks. Follow along and stay loud with the rest of us. More voices means more pressure on a system that counts on silence.
#MZ30#WeThePatients#YearOfThePatient
