Desiree, United States
Working with kids, I was always getting sick, so when my body started changing, I brushed it off as just another bug I picked up at work. But something deeper was happening. I was throwing up more often, eating less because I constantly felt full, my stomach bloated in a way that didn’t feel normal, and there was this dull, persistent abdominal pain I couldn’t explain.
On September 28th, 2023, I went in for what was supposed to be a routine three-month check-in for my ADHD medication. I told my doctor everything. Every symptom. And I was told it was probably just my period, as if I didn’t know my own body at 27 years old. So I tried to believe him. I went home and kept living, kept working, kept ignoring the quiet alarm bells in my body.
But my body kept getting louder.
The symptoms didn’t fade. They built. By December, I couldn’t stop throwing up. I ended up in the emergency room, exhausted and scared, hearing nurses wonder if maybe my appendix had burst. As they wheeled me into the ultrasound room, I still thought this would be something simple. Instead, I learned I needed emergency surgery. Two large cysts had twisted around my ovary, cutting off its blood supply. One was the size of a softball, the other closer to a baseball.
After surgery, through the haze of anesthesia and fear, one question kept circling in my mind: is it cancer? I asked the doctor, and he gently reassured me that because I was young and otherwise healthy, the odds were incredibly low. He said I had a better chance of winning the lottery than this being cancer, and I clung to those words like a life raft.
Two weeks later, I was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer.
Since then, time has felt different. There are days I look at myself and feel proud of the person I am becoming—stronger, softer, more present, more sure of my voice. And there are days I ache for the version of me who didn’t know hospital rooms by heart, who didn’t measure life in scans and follow-ups, who believed that feeling “off” was something you could just sleep away.
Cancer took things from me—ease, innocence, the illusion of guaranteed tomorrows. But it also gave me something back. It forced me to listen to my body. It taught me that being dismissed can be dangerous. It reminded me that no one knows what I’m feeling better than I do.
From that point on, life didn’t feel automatic or assumed. Some days I grieve the girl I was before all of this. Other days I’m grateful for her, because she fought long enough for me to be here now.
I didn’t choose this story, but it’s part of me. And if it taught me anything, it’s this: don’t rush being alive. Go to the appointment. Get the second opinion. Say the thing you’re scared to say. Take the picture. Make the plan. Text your friends back. Tell people you love them out loud. Wear the outfit. Rest when you need to. Celebrate the small stuff. Don’t wait for a “someday.” Let it be messy and real. Live.