Jennifer was 24 when she was diagnosed. Her husband lived in a different state. Her friends were building their careers in graduate school. But cancer changed her outlook on life and she chose to seize her days.

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Transcript

My name is Jennifer. I’m 36. I’ve had two different breast cancers, pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer, and thyroid cancer. Got diagnosed the first time when I was 24. I was married for about a year or so, and the marriage was not so good at the time. All my other friends were off at graduate school, and Progressing in their careers, and my life came to a screeching halt, and I think most of my friends didn’t really get the whole cancer thing, so. I was kind of on my own dealing with it. My husband and I were living in a different state because we’re both in the military, and I realized at that time that it wasn’t really a priority for him. And I kept thinking, I’ve got cancer, I have bilateral mastectomies, I’m 24 years old, this is it, this is all I’m going to get, and I’m stuck here.

And I think it took a while that this wasn’t okay to be treated like that. I kept thinking, no one else is going to have you if you have cancer. Mastectomies, and you’re 24 years old, and you’re bald, and you I puke a lot. It doesn’t do well on the dating scene. It was about two, three years after the first cancer I realized that I survived cancer and I’m 27 years old.

There’s a whole lot more out there than plodding along in this relationship that isn’t really doing anything for me. So I think it was the cancer that was the kick in the pants that I needed, even though it took me a while to get out of that. So I had a husbandectomy, lost 200 pounds, and it was great.

I met my current husband right as I was getting diagnosed with thyroid cancer, so that was my test. I was living in Connecticut, and he flew in, and he took excellent care of me, and he was okay through the whole thing, and I think then we had the whole thing. Another pancreatic breast cancer issue just the past two years, and he has been by my side the entire time, and there really was a reason that all this happened.

I think when I went through chemo this past time, and I met a lot of people who were doing it the first time, I realized that, we should do something about this. So we started little disco parties in the chemo room, and we had a luau, and every three weeks it was a different theme. And I felt like, I’ve already been through here, maybe my role or gift is to help other people through this, so instead of us all sitting miserable looking at the ceiling tiles, we should get together and have a party.

When I was pregnant with my son, my brother had an adrenal cortical carcinoma and he passed away shortly after while I was still married to my first husband. And my dad passed away from cancer when I was 13. When you realize maybe I’m not going to see 41, what do I really want to do? And then you always meet someone else.

else.

And I don’t want to say someone else is always worse off, but you always realize Wow, I’ve got good friends, and I’ve got a decent family, and you realize in the big picture I’m getting all upset about this, but does it really matter? No, because I get to come home to my family every night and tuck my kids into bed, and there’s a lot of other people I’ve met along the way that don’t get to do that.

And I have that, so I shouldn’t waste it on being all stressed out about something silly.