f*** this cancer

HELLO PEOPLE.

I’ve taken a hiatus from wedding planning in order to accomplish my life dream of getting cancer. I’d like to thank the Academy, my loving fiance, and my doting mother for allowing me to microwave Styrofoam for the first 18 years of my life. I woke up a few weeks ago with some giant lumps on my neck and thought “Finally! The larval state is over and I’m completing my transformation into a pile of mashed potatoes!” But alas, the doctor said I was no mashed potato— I WAS CANCER.

Well, I’m not cancer, but my neck is. I have been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which is like the misunderstood bad boy of cancer. If all of the other cancers are sitting around the cancer water cooler, sippin’ cancer juice and talking about their kids, Hodgkin’s is spiking the coffee pot with cheap rum and calling in sick to trip balls at a bluegrass festival. I’m not really sure where this metaphor is going, but the point is that all of my nurses and doctors have told me that Hodgkin’s is a) one of the most curable cancers given I respond well to treatment and b) a super-cool young person’s cancer.

I was diagnosed on my 26^th birthday. I don’t recommend giving anyone cancer for their birthday; not only is it in poor form, but it’s hard to gift-wrap and more difficult to care for than a newborn puppy. This god-awful gift did, however, really ramp up the speed at which my quarter-life existential crisis was barreling down the tracks. Two weeks before my birthday I woke up at 2 AM and ended up staring at my eye wrinkles for a full half-hour; I went back to bed and immediately ordered retinol cream. I was terrified of getting old, of wasting my youth, of my forehead taking the shape of a confused pug’s. The most pressing worry in my life was that I might never get to meet Tony Danza and then BAM. CANCER. Life is short, eat pray love, smell the roses before you die, etc, etc. Every idiotic platitude that has ever been plastered on a pixelated shot of a Hawaiian sunset and shared by soccer moms on Facebook was filling my head. Not only is life short, it could be a lot shorter than I thought.

Now that I know my full diagnosis, I feel more confident that I’m not going to immediately keel over. Cancer has also cured my fear being old. Not because I now expect to die, but because I am constantly surrounded by people that were alive when Hitler was still a jaded art school reject with a doofy haircut. I am the hippest person in the room for the first time. I stroll into that oncology waiting room like a hungover rock star on the third day of the European tour; all the old people watch as I snap the collar on my leather jacket and click my stiletto heels on over to the sign-in sheet. I saunter to the blood lab, hitting the Greatest Generation with the scent of Jameson and a Parisian nightclub as they admire my devil-may-care attitude and badass fashion sense. “Ah,” sighs one old man, “reminds me of my nights in Cuba with Hemingway.” I wink at him, let the nurse draw my blood, and then look her in the eye with a devilish smirk on my face. “Grape juice, please,” I say, laughing, “make it a double.” Everyone in the oncology blood lab giggles at my nonchalance in the face of death and we sit there, eating our peanut butter crackers and drinking our Welch’s and talking about artsy and edgy and awesome I am.

Now, if you asked my parents how my oncology visits have been going, they might tell you that I show up in sweatpants and sit in the far corner of the room and bitch under my breath about how this place sucks and it smells funny and I hate that stupid jigsaw puzzle and WHY CAN’T ANY OF THESE PEOPLE FIGURE OUT HOW TO STAND IN A DAMN LINE IT IS NOT THAT DIFFICULT. And they might tell you that I get very excited about hospital catfish when I’m under the influence of intravenous Valium. They might also tell you that I spend most of my time watching Netflix and ranting about why I think Dr. Watson and Sherlock totally wanna make out. None of these things are true. I am a cool, young, hip cancer patient. I have very little hair and lots of giant scars. I spend a good amount of time choking down pills and sleeping all day.

I AM A ROCK STAR.