“But after everything, I am trying to live a life that is no longer defined by cancera disease where abnormal cells split without control and spread to other nearby body tissue and/or organs. I don’t want to live as an interesting case study, I simply want to live as a normal 19-year-old teenager.”
I had never thought of myself as a particularly interesting person.
At 18, I was diagnosed with a High gradea description of how abnormal cancer cells and tissue look under a microscope when compared to healthy cells neuroepithelial tumoura tissue mass that forms from groups of unhealthy cells – MN1 altered (BEND2/EWSR1 fusion variant).
During that time, I had many doctors tell me my tumour is interesting, rare, something they hadn’t seen before. I didn’t necessarily feel interesting just because I was somewhat of a medical mystery. I thought I had separated myself from my tumour, metaphorically and literally.
A friend recently asked me if she could interview me about my cancer journeywhat a person experiences/lives from the time they think they have cancer for an assignment. Starting the interview, she asked me to introduce myself. I panicked, feeling like I was in front of thirty of my university peers doing an awkward icebreaker to start the semester. It was such a simple question and yet my mind blanked. Every thought, interest and hobby I had ever known simply disappeared from my mind.
Hi, my name is Sienna Rossi. I’m 19 but when I was 18 I was diagnosed with cancer.
Cancer was not something a person would typically bring up in an introduction or an icebreaker – I am sure it would make a room colder and less approachable.
Before I was diagnosed, I loved to read, binge-watch shows, line up for hours on end for concerts and obsess over celebrities. Yet, I had just reduced my identity to my name and my illness. I wanted to pause and scramble to clarify I am not identified by my illness! I am so much more than cancer! But nothing came out and I realised that for the sake of being interesting and relevant to my friend’s assignment, I had been defined by my illness again.
In the course of the past 12 months, cancer has taken over my life. There were days when my body did not feel like my own; my veins a path for drugs to reach their destination, my skull a graveyard for an unwanted squatter and my hair on every surface of my house except for the right side of my head. Then there are days that almost feel normal and I am reminded of who I was before. Before the surgerytreatment involving removal of cancerous tissue and/or tumours and a margin of healthy tissue around it to reduce recurrence. Before the diagnosisthe process of identifying a disease based on signs and symptoms, patient history and medical test results. Before radiation. Before chemotherapya cancer treatment that uses drugs to kill or slow the growth of cancer cells, while minimising damage to healthy cells. Before.
Every day I crave normalcy but I now know that my normal will be different, is different already. I have never craved the mundane until I faced the extraordinary; cancer.
As my treatment came to an end roughly 10 months after hospitalisation, I have tried as best as possible to resume a normal life. I have re-enrolled in university, bought concert tickets, gone out to eat in a restaurant, used public transport for city outings and hugged my friends without a mask. I have done as many mundane things that I could think of to regain my confidence, independence, personality and ultimately, my life.
Amongst all of this, I still have routine scans and appointments (catalysing what every cancer patient knows as ‘scanxiety’) every two months as a constant reminder of what has happened and what could happen in the future.
But after everything, I am trying to live a life that is no longer defined by cancer. I don’t want to live as an interesting case study, I simply want to live as a normal 19-year-old teenager.