Mary Best

Weight management is by far the most personal part of my journey I’ve talked about so far. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent elated or devastated reacting to the numbers on the scale and how they are represented on my body.

There are countless things to say about going through cancer treatment and testing, but in my experience, it’s the elements of survivorship that often go ignored or are put off to deal with at a later date.

A solid ten years of dreaming and planning finally came to fruition only to go up in flames thanks to a 30-minute doctor appointment on the Upper West Side. The culprit? Cancer.

Everyone has a story to tell. Whether on a first date, job interview or happy hour with a new friend, there’s always a select version of our story that we choose to share. It usually includes where we went to school and how we found ourselves where we are today.

Regardless of how or when you choose to share your experience, remember that your voice could make a difference in someone’s life. All I can hope is that my words might reach another survivor and remind them that they are not alone.

Everybody has bad days, but nobody tells you how to handle them. The times where you feel hopeless, anxious or paranoid. When you feel angry that cancer will always be a part of your life, scared that it may come back or frustrated that side effects from treatment might never go away.

With only a few days until Christmas, I’m doing everything I can to channel that strength and use it to begin 2017 on a grateful and optimistic note.

There are certain times of year when my cancer story makes me feel incredibly isolated. There’s the time surrounding April 14, the day I was diagnosed, July 29, the day I was deemed “in remission” and, the one I’ve experienced most recently, the month of October.

For every amazing, caring friend, there’s another who has drifted away. The one who wholeheartedly promised, “if you need anything, I’m here,” and wasn’t. There are just some friends, for whatever reason, who won’t be there for you, even if you really want them or need them in your corner.
FOMO, the abbreviated slang meaning “fear of missing out,” is a huge mental and emotional side effect of being a young adult cancer survivor and represents just a sliver of the unique challenges we have to face during and well after the fight of our lives.
For me, the negative results meant we still couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong, and I'd have to be poked and prodded with more needles.
Waiting to turn 21 as a member of the millennial generation is a rite of passage with a whole slew of traditions. For me, it was drinking a margarita at midnight on a Tuesday while doing advertising homework, enjoying a birthday cake with a drunk look-alike Barbie doll adorned by liquor shots and finally using those alcoholic emojis on Facebook without fear of legal repercussion.