There’s a very good chance you know someone who’s had cancer. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), more than one million people get cancer in the U.S. every year—and one in three women are at risk to develop some form of the disease in their lifetime. The ACS estimates that the population of survivors will hit 19 million (9.6 million of them female) by 2024.
June 7 is National Cancer Survivors Day. This celebratory event was created 28 years ago by the National Cancer Survivors Day Foundation, a nonprofit organization that defines a survivor as "anyone living with a history of cancer—from the moment of diagnosis through the remainder of life." The foundation says the day was started as a way to raise awareness and improve the quality of life of survivors.
We reached out to organizations including Bright Pink, Avon Foundation for Women, Skin Cancer Foundation, Colon Cancer Alliance, Foundation for Women’s Cancer, and American Childhood Cancer Foundation and spoke with six women who’ve had various types of cancer and are currently cancer-free. Here are their stories.
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Aubrey Ellis, diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35
The Chicago resident and her twin brother both tested positive for the BRCA2 gene in 2013 after her dad was diagnosed with breast cancer and then tested positive for the genetic mutation himself. (According to the ACS, the lifetime risk for a man is one in 1,000.)
“It was almost good to know in black and white what I was dealing with,” says Aubrey. “But it definitely wasn’t an easy undertaking to get tested. It was very emotional.”
Five months before being diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in her right breast in 2014, Aubrey got a call from her ob-gyn telling her that, based on her hormone levels, she was having ovarian failure and was actually in the early phases of menopause. “It was devastating,” she says of all the diagnoses. After getting a double mastectomy in August 2014, Aubrey had her ovaries and tubes removed (she kept her uterus so that she can still carry a child using a donor egg if she wants to) and had breast reconstructive surgery in November 2014.
Aubrey felt anxiety about what her new breasts would look like. “They’re such a huge part of your self-confidence and your sexual being,” she says. “David [my husband] and I had a really intimate moment where we decided to plaster my body—we used a kit where we made a cast of my breasts and belly [before the surgeries],” says Aubrey. “It was the most intimate and amazing experience. It was his way saying of saying goodbye to my former self. We’re thinking of painting it one day and doing a new one for my new breasts.”
Although she went for a larger size (she had been a 34B), she ultimately doesn’t feel her most confident with a D cup, so she’s going down to a smaller size. Her surgery is scheduled for next Friday. “They weren’t that comfortable at the gym or while I was sleeping," she says. "I just feel in my own mind’s eye that I’m too large. I want to be closer in resemblance to my former self.”
Right now, Aubrey says she’s taking things one day at time. Her husband, family, friends, and the women she’s met through Bright Pink’s mentor program all have had a profound effect on her recovery. “You really learn about how loved you are when you go through something like this,” she says.
Kaitlin Johnson, diagnosed with skin cancer at age 21
Kaitlin regularly went tanning from the ages of 16 to 20—she’d go before dance recitals, prom, and homecoming. In the fall of 2013, she noticed a weird mole on her leg. “I knew it hadn’t always been there, but I kept putting off going to the doctor,” says Kaitlin, now a 22-year-old senior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “In the back of my head, I had a feeling that it was going to be cancerous.”
The spot was raised, and it was really dark. Her mom told her she should have it checked out, so Kaitlin had the mole removed last July by her primary care doctor. A few weeks later, she got a phone call at work telling her that she had melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released data stating that melanoma rates have doubled from 1982 to 2011.)
“I don’t remember anything that she said after or what was going on because I totally shut down,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how I was going to drive home because I was a mess.” She had surgery in August 2014 to remove the tumor and luckily learned that the cancer hadn’t spread. Still, the recovery was tough. “I had to start school a week late and even starting a week late, the nurse was really weary about letting me go back because it was hard to walk,” says Kaitlin.
Kaitlin has a giant scar on her leg, seen above. For a while, her mom helped her change the bandages post-surgery. “When I took the bandages off [for the first time], I was so horrified at how my leg looked that I couldn’t gather myself to even look at it,” she says.
These days, Kaitlin wears sunscreen every day. “Even though I had skin cancer, I don’t want to stop living my life the way that I want to,” she says. “It’s summer, and I love going to the pool and being outside. But when I do go outside or I know I’ll be in the sun for prolonged periods of time, I try to wear a baseball cap or a sun hat. And I’ve been wearing SPF 100, actually.”
She hopes her story makes other women who still tan stop. “This is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life,” she says. “A lot of my friends that have tanned stopped tanning. Even acquaintances and people I’ve met randomly have said, ‘Oh, because of you I don’t tan anymore,’ which makes me feel good.”
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Dawn Eicher, diagnosed with colon cancer at age 36
Dawn, now 38 and living in the Sacramento area with her husband and two kids under 4, started noticing bright red blood on her toilet paper when she was 21 years old. Because of her age, she says doctors told her it was probably just an anal fissure or hemorrhoids. “My doctor actually tried to order a scope, but my insurance company denied it because I was too young,” says Dawn.
Fast forward to when she was six months pregnant with her son two years ago: “I was bleeding really badly,” she says. “I used WebMD to see if I could find something before I called my doctor and freaked out, and it diagnosed me with colon cancer. I called my ob-gyn and was very careful to use the terminology I found online. But again, my doctor said, ‘You’re pregnant, I’m sure your fine.’ I was given some suppositories and sent on my way.”
Six months after giving birth, she finally had a colonoscopy and learned that she had stage IV colon cancer. Not only was there an eight-centimeter tumor in her rectum, but the cancer had spread to her liver, too. “The tumor was as low as it could go, and doctors joked that it was trying to escape,” says Dawn. She chose to have chemo, radiation, and surgery (she had parts of her colon removed, her gallbladder removed, and her liver re-sectioned).
“I’m about nine months out from doing my last round [of chemo], and just in the last month, I’ve started to feel better,” says Dawn. “That’s how long it takes.” Acupuncture helped ease the post-chemo and post-radiation pain.
Dawn’s next big medical scan is this month. She’s focused on living in the moment—and she’s found a new passion in advocacy. She started a Change.org petition to lower the colon cancer screening age, and it's gotten more than 76,000 signatures. “I enjoy every minute of every day and don’t hyper-focus on the future and what it can bring,” she says. “I do my best to keep myself healthy, raise my family, and make memories. I hope to be around for a long time, but if I’m not, then I’m going to make the most of it now.”
Naomi Bartley, diagnosed with leukemia at age 7
For Naomi, a 35-year-old currently living in Kensington, Maryland, with her husband and young daughter, there is no life “before cancer.” She was diagnosed with a rare form of childhood cancer—acute myelogenous leukemia—when she was just 7 years old. Naomi had chemotherapy, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant from her older brother. “I remember being in the transplant unit [and] being very isolated,” she says. “I was only allowed to see my mom and one other family member. I was in the hospital for Christmas, and even Santa Claus wasn’t allowed to come in.”
When she reached the five-year cancer-free mark, she started experiencing what are known as late side effects (chronic long-term health issues that come on years after cancer treatment is over), common for blood cancer survivors. For Naomi, these have included high blood pressure, heart abnormalities, swelling in the legs, and cataracts. She was also diagnosed and treated for thyroid cancer when she was 24. And thanks to the radiation she received as a kid, she had a high-risk pregnancy and delivered her daughter, who is now 6, at just 25 weeks old. “She had to fight for her life because of the treatment—and the side effects of the treatment—I was given,” says Naomi.
While she was on bed rest during her pregnancy, Naomi’s brothers kept her spirits up. “My brothers were fabulous during that time,” she says. “One of them would come over on his lunch break and bring me food so I didn’t have to eat the hospital food. He’d bring me milkshakes from the best place in Washington, D.C., because I was craving them, and we’d watch movies together in my room.”
Naomi leads a very active life, despite lingering side effects from her cancer treatments. “I like to snowboard, and I like to rock climb,” she says. “I’m also getting into swimming with my daughter, and she’s started to join me at the climbing gym, which is a lot of fun. I like to keep busy—that’s important for me to ensure that I’m strengthening my heart as much as I can through aerobic exercises.”
She’s also very vocal about raising awareness for childhood cancer and about the long-term damage that aggressive treatments can do to bodies that are still growing. She’s a board member for the American Childhood Cancer Foundation, and she launched her own iPhone app, iCancer, to help make it easier for cancer patients and caregivers to organize medical records in one place.
Kristin LaLima, diagnosed with breast cancer at age 38
The 41-year-old Brooklyn mom of two felt a lump in her breast close to four years ago and went in for a mammogram. “I had lost weight, and when I lose weight the first place I lose it is in my chest,” says Kristin. “So I was able to feel a lump.” She was diagnosed with invasive stage II breast cancer and was HER2 positive (HER2 is a protein, human epidermal growth receptor 2, that promotes the growth of cancer cells). She had a double mastectomy, reconstructive surgery, and five months of chemo followed by 25 rounds of radiation.
Kristin, who works in market research, continued working all through her treatment. She also kept up with her tae kwon do classes, receiving her red and black belts while she was going through chemo. “I just refused to stop,” she says. “At my black belt test, I was completely bald and had my bandanna on, and you know what—I really think that this was very important and kept me going.”
Making sure her two sons, who were 7 and 11 at the time, felt normal, was also important to Kristin. “I made sure I made dinner every night,” she says. “I would always tell them funny stories, too. I just thought mood was everything. Negativity and sadness were only going to make things worse, so anything I could do to spare them [from that] and make things a little better, I tried to do.” She even made a video photo journal documenting her life since the diagnosis:
Since her cancer was aggressive, Kristin goes back to her oncologist every three months for check-ins. “I try to keep a positive mindset and keep on doing anything I can to keep going,” she says, citing regular exercise, eating clean, and training for the upcoming Avon 39-mile walk to end breast cancer as some of the lifestyle choices that have helped her feel good both physically and mentally.
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Ellen Dolinar, diagnosed with uterine cancer at age 49
In 2012, Ellen, who lives in Indianapolis, started experiencing irregular bleeding. She went to her gyno, who put her on a different birth-control Pill, but the irregular bleeding didn’t stop. “I was 49, and gynecological cancers typically occur in older women," says Ellen. "So my doctor said, 'Let’s find out what’s going on,' and it was those simple words that saved my life.”
After a D&C (dilation and cutterage, a procedure to remove tissue from the uterus), Ellen was diagnosed with uterine papillary serous carcinoma, a form of gynecological cancer. She had a full hysterectomy, as well as chemo and internal and external radiation. “When the radiologist explained some of the possible side effects, it really freaked me out,” she says. “My best friend said to me recently, ‘I remember hugging you when the radiologist said one of the possible side effects of internal radiation could be burning a hole in your bladder.’”
Ellen’s best friend was her biggest supporter and was there for her every step of the way. “She was my scribe,” says Ellen. "She would go to all my appointments with me and would keep a notebook of everything that was said.”
One of the side effects Ellen has experienced from the radiation is lymphedema, a build-up of fluids in the lymph systems, which causes swelling in the lower extremeties of some women who've had gynecological cancer treatments. “I wish I had known if there was a way to prevent that,” she says. “That had never been explained to me, so now, like many women [who've had gynecological cancer], we all own a nice collection of compression garments.”
After everything she’s gone through, Ellen feels like she’s finally found her calling in life. She reached out to the Foundation for Women’s Cancer after she was diagnosed, and she’s been on the host committee for their National Race to End Women’s Cancer since 2013. “I think I have found my purpose, or it found me," she says. "It is to spread the word about this, to help other women."
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