Patient Experiences With Cancer

A secret language, dark jokes, and grueling membership dues. A folklorist's look at the culture of cancer survivors.

Hold the flowers, please! What? No “get well” cards? Learn the secrets for assembling the ideal gift or care package for a cancer patient, while avoiding dangerous blunders.

The painful story of how I lost friends after I was diagnosed with cancer. I'd heard from my cancer therapist that it's actually a common phenomenon, but I never thought it would happen to me.

Do you know if your house was built using asbestos? If it was built before 1990, it likely was. This is the story of how we found out our house was built from asbestos, including important health and safety information.

A year of doctors, surgeries, self-determination, and growth.

If your mom was just diagnosed with breast cancer, there's a good chance you're feeling scared, confused, and depressed. Here's what I learned about handling life when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in early 2019.

Getting diagnosed with cancer an be a great shock to the system. These are some of the things I wish I knew when I was diagnosed with cancer.

This article talks about what happens to hair after chemo therapy has ended and your hair starts growing back.

For certain women, 23andMe's BRCA 1/2 report can be very useful, as long as you understand what it means and its limitations.

When someone in your family is living with cancer, everything changes. In 2018, my husband was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. This article chronicles his experience from having difficulty swallowing to having an esophagectomy.

How can I have terminal cancer and be grateful for it? Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? The truth is that it has taught me so much and has made me more appreciative of things I may have taken for granted.

A mastectomy causes both physical and emotional pain, not just from the surgery but because of the lifestyle changes it requires. Knowing what to expect helps. These tips for adapting to your new body should also help.

Discovering you have a genetic susceptibility to developing cancer is terrifying, but it is important to know if you have BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 mutation so that breast cancer and ovarian cancer can be caught early, or even prevented.

On September 13, 2016, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This is my story, with my tips for coping with your own breast cancer diagnosis.

This article describes a struggle to get proper treatment for a father with bladder cancer. If you or someone you know is infected by BCG, seek an infectious disease specialist.

If you have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, here are the things you need to do to make informed decisions regarding surgery and treatments.