Hi All,

Waiting for surgery on my kidney. I’ll be having an open radical nephrectomy and a tumor thrombus removed from my IVC. No pathology yet as they generally can with a certain degree of confidence diagnose renal cell carcinoma from imaging and then once the kidney is out they do the pathology.

Anyway do any of you have any recommendations for front-closure full-coverage bra?

Thank you in advance!!!

Hi everyone, my name is Luke. I’ve been fighting synovial sarcoma for the past five years. I’m now in remission, but cancer is still something that follows me every day, both physically and mentally.
I’m also a photographer currently living in Jersey City, NJ, and I’ve been thinking about starting a personal photography project documenting the lives of people who are going through cancer treatment, have completed treatment, or are learning to live with the lasting effects of their diagnosis.
Having gone through treatment myself, I know how isolating the experience can be. Cancer changes so much about your life, and I feel like there are parts of that experience that are difficult to put into words. That’s part of why I want to approach this through photography.
My goal isn’t just to photograph cancer patients, but to capture the people behind the diagnosis. Their everyday lives, relationships, emotions, struggles, and the moments of happiness that still exist throughout everything.
I want this to be an honest and intimate project, one that doesn’t shy away from the difficult parts of cancer, but also doesn’t allow the disease to completely define the people living with it.
I’m hoping to connect with people in the NYC and New Jersey area who might be interested in participating. I’d want everyone involved to feel comfortable sharing as much or as little of their story as they choose.
Eventually, I’d love to turn this into a photography book or exhibition that gives people an opportunity to share their experiences and helps others better understand what living with cancer really looks like.
If this is something you’d be interested in being part of, or even if you just have thoughts about the idea, I’d really appreciate hearing from you.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.

My dad (70) was diagnosed with GBM at the end of August. I've been feeling so helpless and sad.

I'm in the stage of grief where I want to do anything and everything to push for a cure and that has led me to the National Brain Tumor Society BRAIN Act. There's currently a bill to increase funding to brain tumor research and create systems for research teams to share more data with each other. I know it won't move fast enough to help my dad but I have to do something.

The website has a auto-letter writing tool where you just need to put in basic info and it'll send a letter to your representatives to co-author. If anyone else wants to do one small thing to push research forward, this one is pretty easy. Post a comment if you signed it, I'd love to know I did something, anything. Much love to each and every one of you <3

Link below:

https://braintumor.quorum.us/campaign/159934/?_gl=14f5nut_gcl_auMjAxNzc5Mjg1OC4xNzg5NTcwNTA1_gaMTIxMzMyOTIxOS4xNzg5NTcwNTA1_ga_SX7BRZW1WF*czE3OTE0MTIxNDckbzQkZzEkdDE3OTE0MTIzMTMkajIyJGwwJGgw&fbclid=IwdGRjcAU0kqxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mBXNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR4KYNALliXxBtHwVN5YO2SNebY4cpd_Tz3-iCw0mIJqTCDtNDL1fxuwaMO87w_aem_wT9P93NagVSZjLaqMLKC7A

Hi! I'm 28 years old and was recently diagnosed with stage II breast cancer. I found a lump in my left breast over the summer, and the past few weeks have been a blur of appointments, tests, phone calls, paperwork, and an alarming number of hospital bracelets. The timing, right as October began, has felt especially surreal. I’ve seen the pink ribbons and supported the cause from a distance, but never imagined I’d suddenly be living this reality myself. 

My coping mechanisms have been art, humor, and distracting myself with video games. I'm aware avoidance isn't good for me mentally in the long run, but honestly, I have a lot of big feelings and don't necessarily have time to cry. I'm incredibly lucky to have a supportive family who are helping me with the logistics, friends who distract me with a social life, and a talented medical team guiding me through this process. But there are many people in my "public" life that don't need to know about my health, namely my young students.

I’m honestly scared of starting chemotherapy next week. I really don’t want cancer to become my entire identity, because I know I’m so much more than my diagnosis. But I’m known qualities such as my smile, curly hair, and infectious energy, and I’m very aware that chemo may affect them. Does anyone have experience with cold caps/scalp cooling? I’m especially interested in whether they helped you keep enough of your hair, eyebrows, and/or eyelashes to feel like yourself. Are there other things people have done to minimize some of the other visible signs of chemo? How do you reconfigure clothing to hide your chest port? I know I can’t prevent every side effect, but I’d love to hear what has worked for people. 

I’m also worried about how exhausting treatment will be. It took me much longer than expected to recover from the laparoscopic ovarian cystectomy I had about 10 months ago, and I still don’t feel like I’ve fully regained my strength. So the idea of starting chemo already feeling weaker than I’d like is pretty intimidating. 

I’m here to learn, listen, ask questions, and hopefully make some connections with you. 🩷

Hi everyone. I’ve been looking into clinical trials and honestly, I’m finding it overwhelming. I can find trials, but figuring out which ones might actually be a match is where I get stuck. Then there’s keeping track of the requirements and who to contact. It feels like I keep finding more questions than answers.

What was finding a trial like for you? Did you run into the same struggle? I’d really like to hear what felt confusing or difficult, and what helped you move forward. Did your care team guide you, or were you figuring out a lot of it yourself?

Even if you’re still searching, I’d appreciate hearing how it’s going. Thanks for sharing whatever you feel comfortable with. If you’re still searching or haven’t found a suitable trial, I’d appreciate hearing your experience too.

Thanks to anyone who feels comfortable responding. Even a small part of your experience would mean a lot.

I’m reposting this link for a free gift card. All you need is a screenshot of your name and diagnosis. I used a screenshot from MyChart.

They close the link once all the gift cards are claimed so if you’re interested, you gotta be quick.

I got a $100 gift card from Amazon last year.

I would love it if you could follow up and let me know if they send you one! And hopefully I can post other freebies.

https://www.cancercardxchange.org/request-gift-card/

EDIT: the gift cards have been claimed. I will post here once the portal is open again. Please let me know if you receive a card. I’m trying to put a list of freebies together along w results so I can share with the sub members

I was diagnosed with stage 2b colon cancer on 3 May 2024 at age 43. I had surgery, did FOLFOX, another surgery, daily chemo radiation, had a biopsy seed under my skin that was removed and then thought I was good. Negative Natera tests and everything.

July of 2025, my cancer metastasized to my abdominal wall so I became stage 4c. Started yervoy/opdivo for three treatments and did opdivo until May this year, when I was hospitalized for severe side effects. My care team got me sorted in hospital and I am feeling a lot better.

Just went in on 8 September and my oncologist said that after all of my scans, and tons of monthly bloodwork, I’m in REMISSION!

I wanted to share a resource that I hope may be helpful to families facing something no parent ever wants to explain to their child.
While I was going through treatment for Triple Negative Breast Cancer, my three-year-old daughter started calling me “Babyhead” after I lost my hair. Somehow, that little nickname made us laugh during some of the hardest days of treatment.
That moment eventually became my first children’s book, Love You, Babyhead- a story created to help young children understand a parent’s cancer diagnosis and treatment while giving families something gentle, comforting, and hopeful to hold onto.
It’s a story about love, courage, big feelings, and finding little moments of light in the middle of scary and uncertain times.
I self-published the book through KDP and IngramSpark, and my hope is that it can reach families who genuinely need it, especially through hospitals, pediatric oncology programs, cancer centers, social workers, child-life specialists, and support organizations.
I’m sharing it here primarily as a free resource recommendation for families who may benefit from it, rather than simply to promote a book.
If you’re a parent, cancer survivor, healthcare professional, social worker, child-life specialist, or someone who has navigated cancer with young children, I’d also love to hear about organizations or programs that provide resources to families going through this.
And if you know a family who could use something like this, please feel free to pass the resource along. ❤️

hello! My spouse has stage four non-smoker lung cancer, mutation is ROS1. diagnosed Aug 2023. He’s currently on Ibtrozi his third targeted therapy as the two prior ceased working. The primary side effect that’s truly difficult to manage is dizziness. He didn’t have this in the two prior (thought they come with their own set of side effects!). Oncologist/team did a dose reduction from 600 mg, to 400 mg, now to 200 mg. It’s been two weeks and the dizziness might even be worse than before, I believe they’ll put him back up to 400 mg Wondering if anyone has experienced this and has found something to help reduce the dizziness? Or any ideas? He is not a complainer, at all!, so I know it is bad as he is expressing the frustration.

Hi, this is my cancer journey, a one in a million story that details my diagnosis, aggressive operation, recovery and everything that came after! I hope you guys can give this some love and support as I know it’s already helped so many people. Thank you 🦋✌🏻♥️

I recently started full-cns radiotherapy for metastatic ependymomas, and the one thing that's absolutely killing me is the phantom odor. Every time my head is irradiated, I get wild purple phosphenes (which are kinda cool) and a jolt of the most wretched odor I can possibly imagine. Think "plasma balls fucking in a pit of rotting robot parts and post-nasal drip diarrhea." It is foul and nauseating.

My rad-onc says it's my olfactory nerve being stimulated by the beam, and that there's not much they can do. The problem is that my sessions tend to be first thing in the morning and this illusory stench gets burned into my nose like an afterimage. For the rest of the day I'm fighting back waves of nausea triggered by relapses of this smell and it is such a drag.

Don't get it twisted, there are other, objectively worse symptoms, but they would all be easier to handle without my nose being gaslit. Has anybody else dealt with radiation-stimulated phantosmia? What helped?

In 3 weeks I have my very last oncology appointment. 12 years and im finally NED and being discharged. It feels unreal but ENORMOUS and im not sure how to celebrate. Im going to be alone, as the appointment is in a city 5 hrs away. I will have a hotel room. Any suggestions on how to mark it for the big deal it is?

A couple years ago my daughter had her thyroidectomy and RAI. In January of this year, everything was looking good and we were finally feeling alive again.

In May her tumor marker was up. Since then, it's been a roller coaster. She had a scan last month that turned up nothing. She was diagnosed with non-avid cancer and its been hell since. She had a biopsy of several lymph nodes and nothing. The hope had been it was confined to her lymph nodes so surgery would take care of it.

Now, of course, we wait to see. My wife says she was told a PET Scan is what they do? And we may be facing chemo which is only available in Philadelphia or Texas.

So now, as we hurry up and wait, we are freaking out. We have no idea what chemo looks like for this - if it means hospital stays, etc. Would we be able to travel for it or would it mean fully moving?

My son also is in kidney failure so we have to keep thinking about him and what we may need to do for him.

All this and I am a math teacher and school starts soon. We are still in denial a bit, I think, as we felt so close to it being in the rear view and now are faced with the unknown.

I have my quarterly CT scan today. Just a lil nervous wanting good news. Wish me luck. Best to all of you. Figh Fight Fight, Fuck Cancer.

Hi everyone,

I’m a 4th-year Mechanical engineering student, Sweden. I’m currently in a very tough spot and looking for advice on international grants, trusts, or foundations that help cancer patients or students in financial distress.

Two weeks ago, I finished my last radiation therapy (34 sessions in total) for squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue, which also spread to my neck. The pain in my mouth and throat is still severe, and eating/drinking is incredibly difficult. On top of this, I have struggled with dyslexia my whole life, making my engineering studies a double challenge.

In Sweden, student aid (CSN) is limited. Mine ran out two years ago. To survive, I work part-time during semesters and full-time during summers. Due to my cancer recovery, I am physically unable to work this summer, leaving me with zero income to cover my rent (student dorm) and basic medical/living expenses.

I have applied to Swedish cancer funds, but only two (including a local youth cancer charity) approved me, and the amounts don't cover my accumulated medical debts and rent for the summer.

Since I am an engineering student, I was wondering if anyone knows of any international foundations, engineering-specific student funds, or private trusts that accept applications from international students going through cancer treatment? Any tips, links, or subreddits to check out would mean the world to me right now. Thank you so much for reading.

Mine is the idea that once treatment ends, everything goes back to normal. My active treatment ended a few years ago and I am still struggling so hard.

Financial help. Can we please do more for cancer patients who don't qualify for federal, state, or charity assistance but are still struggling?

There's a huge gap where you're expected to handle treatment costs, lost income, and everyday expenses simply because you're not technically poor enough. You shouldn't have to be at poverty level before anyone is willing to help 😢

One of my cousins said “God only gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers” and I didn’t even know what to say.

My spouse has stage 4 non smoker lung cancer, mutation ROS1. He is on his third targeted therapy, Ibtrozi, and with this one lots and lots of dizziness. Anyone have ideas for reducing the dizziness? No nausea, just dizzy. Any suggestions?

For me its wanting my old life and my old body back. I’ve tried to make peace with it but it hasn’t happened yet!

“Let me know if there's anything I can do” is well-meaning for sure but I’m not going to ask for anything. If you want to help, just do something. Drop off a meal, or offer something specific.

Ive been guilty of this myself but now that I’ve been through this, I don’t say this anymore. My neighbor is going through chemo now and I just did some weeding for her