I can't believe it—24 years old and this actually happened!

Two weeks ago, D. and I were hanging out. She’s 24, an incredible person, honestly better than me. She’s been living with my best friend for a while now. They're solid together.

Last week she started feeling sick and couldn't stop throwing up. She thought she might be pregnant, went to the doctor, and they initially suspected anemia. Tomorrow she sees a specialist. It's PAF leukemia. They isolated her immediately...

How does life just flip like that? All your plans just go down the drain overnight.

I immediately went looking up survival statistics—which aren't terrible since her specific type has a better prognosis—but it's all garbage anyway. Nothing is certain. It's all just luck. And at 24???

I'm not posting this to lecture anyone on medical facts. Unfortunately, medicine only helps you live longer. Whether the quality of life actually stays intact is another story.

I have no idea what's going to happen with D. I feel optimistic when I'm with her, but I can't stop wondering... what happens after?
😕

God, this is awful...
It’s just heartbreaking to hear.
I get that the statistics look okay on paper—really, I do—but what does that actually matter when you're that young and facing leukemia? It doesn't change the reality of it.
I really hope her whole family is there with her right now, holding it down through these tough moments....

Everything about this just feels heavy. At the end of the day, health is everything—without it, nothing else really matters.

A girl I went to high school with was diagnosed with thyroid cancer during her senior year. Thankfully, she beat it.

I honestly dread the idea of cancer. Honestly, I just hope that sometime when I'm around 75 or 80, I can just go out from a sudden heart attack... just quick and over with.

I honestly feel so incredibly bad for her; hearing something like that about a young guy is just absolutely gut-wrenching!
Just stay by her side, be her rock through this... and I really hope everything works out for her!

A friend of my dad's—a kid who's been playing competitive soccer since he was sixteen—woke up one Monday with a sore leg. By Wednesday, he was limping. By Friday, they hit him with a diagnosis of galloping sarcoma. The doctors' immediate plan? They wanted to immediately amputate the leg. Almost all the way up to the hip.
His parents wouldn't have it. They demanded second and third opinions, fought to get him moved to a major hospital in Washington, D.C., and after ten surgeries and an entire year of non-stop radiation, the leg is still attached. He’s even back in school now. He still limps a bit and has to go in for checkups twice a month, but he's alive.

How can a life be completely flipped upside down in just five days? It can. And it's horrific.
But then you have us—the healthy, lucky ones—pathetically lecturing people about how terrible things are and shouting "carpe diem" because "you never know what tomorrow brings," without actually living by any of it. That’s almost worse than the disease itself. We play games with our lives, and the moment we actually get sick, we start asking, "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?"...😢 So instead, you end up with the illness and the guilt. Just great.😢

Hannah Scott69....best of luck to both her and you.

Taylor Brown61 said:I feel so incredibly bad for her. It's just heartbreaking to hear something like that about such a young person.
Just stay by her side, be her rock... and I wish her nothing but the best!

I'm with Taylor Brown61 on this one. I actually found myself in a similar spot during my freshman year of college—it was ages ago, though. There was this girl my age, maybe 18 or 19, who had been diagnosed with sarcoma. At first, so many of us were reaching out and talking to her constantly. But as time went on, I lost touch. I don't know if the others still talk to her or what, but personally, we drifted apart. Looking back, I really regret it because she went through things most of us can't even wrap our heads around. It just goes to show that old saying: you find out who your real friends are when things get ugly. Hard times act like a filter for who actually stays.

And yeah, that goes for alexxxx too. Seriously, props to you for being there for your friend dealing with Hodgkin's.

Life is just brutal sometimes. Just keep doing what you've been doing and keep being there for her. Since you're a med student, you actually know the drill and how to handle this stuff better than most. 👍

Also, just a heavy thought—about seven months ago at some local school here, this person just passed away after being in the hospital for a day or two. Nobody knows what happened, and honestly, nobody ever will. She was only 19 or 20.

If the leukemia is caught early enough, everything might turn out okay. You just have to stay strong and be her emotional anchor. You're a college student, you've got this. 👍 Disease doesn't care how old you are.

So a few months back at a hotel front desk, this girl in her early 20s just suddenly collapsed and wouldn't wake up... turns out the autopsy showed she had cancer, though I'm not even sure what kind, and she passed away without ever even knowing she was sick, which is wild because she didn't even have any pain, so I can't tell if that's what actually got her or something else entirely.

Then there was this other young woman who thought she was just pregnant and kept putting off the doctor for weeks since nausea was her only symptom, but then the checkup revealed it was actually cancer and now she's going through chemo.

Honestly, I’d sign a contract right now to just pass away from a heart attack in my 70s or 80s because I am genuinely terrified of cancer after seeing so many people close to me lose their battles with it.

Linda Peterson said:Is it actually possible to flip your entire life upside down in just five days? Yeah. It’s a nightmare...

All it takes is five milliseconds.

honestly we could all just sit here acting all superior and preaching about how terrible this is while shouting "carpe diem" since tomorrow isn't promised, but let's be real because none of us are actually going to change a thing. it’s honestly scarier than being sick because we spend our whole lives playing games with our health and then once it finally hits us we just sit there wondering what we did to deserve it... so you end up stuck with the illness and a massive side of guilt. it's a total mess...

illness doesn't play favorites

swiftbison7 said:Illness doesn't play favorites.

It’s the truth... I just wanted to point out how we tend to throw these deep phrases around way too quickly and with a bit of arrogance, when really, we’re just being lazy. We won't actually commit to ourselves or the people closest to us because we always have a million excuses about having "more important" things to do than simply appreciating the fact that we are alive and healthy. It's all total bullshit. By default, humans are ungrateful, and that's the saddest part of it all. We have our health—the most precious thing we own—and yet it’s never enough for us. Life is tough like that.😢
Threads like this make me feel angry and depressed at the exact same time.😢 First off, I'm pissed at myself...

Linda Peterson said:It's true... I just wanted to say we throw these phrases around way too fast—it’s almost arrogant, really—when the truth is we’re just too lazy to actually show up for ourselves or the people we love. We always have a million excuses because there’s always something "more important" than just stopping to realize we’re alive and kicking... but honestly? It’s all total bullshit.

Things aren't always what they seem, or whatever...

You probably don't even realize you're passing people on the street every day who are fighting tooth and nail just to stay healthy. They live totally "normal" lives—you wouldn't know the difference, not even by how much they care about their families... and they don't need any damn excuses.

When you first hit a wall with your health, besides the fear, the absolute worst part is that feeling of being totally isolated from everyone else who isn't sick. It's this sense that you can't just "live like everyone else"—which basically means acting superficial—plus that freaking internal clock ticking in your head, making you overthink every single tiny decision you make...

But after a while, you start living and acting "normal" again. Sure, only *you* know how much energy it actually takes to pull that off, but you eventually realize you still have the freedom to be yourself... you can even choose to be "superficial" if that's what you feel like doing in the moment.

There's nothing wrong with being superficial. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it feels good... 😁 🙂

Linda Peterson said:We could just sit here as lucky bastards, complaining about how terrible everything is and shouting "carpe diem" because tomorrow isn't promised, but none of us actually live like that. It’s worse than being sick. We gamble with our lives, then when illness hits, we start wondering, "What did I do to deserve this?"...😢 Then you're left with the sickness and the guilt. Great.😢

The truth is, some people are going to die way before their time. Behavior and circumstances aside, statistics don't care. Most of the time we successfully ignore it, until reality hits us in the face through the sudden loss of someone we love.

She’ll be fine, I’m crossing my fingers for her 🙂

I’m honestly starting to wonder how common this actually is... Not too long ago, a guy I truly cared about passed away in his sleep. It was sudden, nobody even knew anything was wrong. Now I look around and see so many people who know someone young fighting some kind of cancer.. it's just horrific.

Hannah Scott69, she's young. Her body should be strong enough to fight this. I know a few people who dealt with leukemia in the past and they're totally fine now, living their lives just like everyone else🙂

J-C said:Maybe if people actually listened, they’d start caring about their health three years before getting sick, instead of waiting until three days before they die.

Look, we're talking about nine-year-olds getting cancer. I don't know a single kid who caught some bullshit disease because they were part of a "high-risk group" or being irresponsible with their body. You can make those arguments about some sixty-year-old guy who spent his youth drinking heavily, driving like a maniac, getting into wrecks, and now he can barely walk because his back is shot or can't breathe because he smoked three packs a day for fifty years. But kids? Give me a break.

It’s an interesting phenomenon: as people get sicker, they tend to place a much higher premium on whatever scraps of health they have left. I know a woman battling leukemia who is never anything but cheerful—she acts like she just hit the jackpot in the lottery (and honestly, given her luck, maybe she did... though on what kind of 😢?

Anyway, I wanted to ask if anyone has any insight into why we're seeing such a spike in these kinds of illnesses, like cancer or leukemia. My take is that it traces back to our tainted food supply and polluted water... not to mention the history of nuclear and hydrogen bomb testing. Officially, the US and Russia alone have detonated roughly 2,000 devices for testing purposes up to this point (which wasn't even a factor fifty years ago). When you consider how much damage a single power plant meltdown in Ukraine can cause, and then look at the daily reality of bombings being thousands of times more destructive than the disaster at Chernobyl... I think we need to look closer at where the real culprit lies.

neonorca11 said:I’ve honestly never seen her looking sad. She’s always grinning like she just hit the jackpot in Vegas.

Same with my friend—she’s basically stuck in "keep on smiling" mode. To me, it just looks like a defense mechanism.

As long as my kids stay healthy, I can handle anything else, honestly. I guess having them when they were little is what kept me going—I just couldn't bring myself to give up because the thought of someone not being there to tuck them in at night, like I did, just broke me. It’s been tough, though. I really hope your friend feels better soon. So yeah, I’m just living my life one day at a time: I’m singing today because who knows if I’ll be able to tomorrow.🙂

I’ve been in a "similar" spot myself—maybe a little less of a mess, though I am terrified of death—but at one point, I somehow felt stronger than everyone else in the room. I remember my guy—he’s definitely not some pushover—thinking I’d just lock myself in a dark room and cry for hours if he wasn't around, but I was like a lightning bolt. I just had this gut feeling that things would work out... that everything would be fine. I don't know... maybe you just get this weird surge of strength to keep going when things hit the fan? Like some kind of defense mechanism or something...

I'm torn... they say there are no atheists in foxholes, but what kind of god hands out cancer to a genuinely good person? WHICH ONE?

Thanks for the support, everyone... my friend is doing okay. Her hair has started thinning, but other than that, she's holding up. I’m hoping she pulls through.
We only realize what matters once it's gone.
😢

If nothing else, try to spend more time with the people you actually care about.
🙂