Samantha S

My name is Samantha S, and I am 23 years old. I love Target, my dog (a Chiweenie named Stanley), and Harry Styles.  I was basically your average college student until March of 2015, when, after some fairly innocent-seeming knee pain, I was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma in my left femur. I was 20 and in the middle of my sophomore year of college.  Thankfully, it had not spread anywhere else, but the treatment for Osteosarcoma is the same whether it is everywhere or nowhere. I had to leave school immediately and begin a very aggressive chemotherapy regimen. I had both inpatient chemo and outpatient chemo over the course of nine months. In August of 2015, I had limb salvage surgery, where they removed the tumor and replaced the affected bone and my knee with a metal prosthetic (and yes, it does set off metal detectors).  The surgery was successful, but I spent a year and a half in physical therapy relearning how to walk. I had my last chemo treatment in December of 2015 (literally two days before Christmas). I now have scans every 6 months, and will for the foreseeable future. I j graduated from college this past May with a degree in Early Childhood Education and am currently looking for a job! I am constantly trying to figure out how life after cancer looks. I am extremely thankful I am at this point, but am still pretty bitter that cancer happened in the first place. Cancer should not have happened to me, but because it did, I have to figure out how to move on with my life, despite its ever-present shadow.

I’m thrilled to be part of Teen Cancer America and what they are doing. From the very beginning of my own “journey” (never have loved that word), I said teens/young adults need their own space. I believe so strongly in what TCA is doing because I was treated in the adult clinic since I was 20. It is absolutely awful to be torn from your world and thrust into the cancer world regardless of your age, but to go from being around my peers to being the youngest person in the clinic or on the floor by a good 20 years was a huge challenge. It was extremely isolating. My nurses and techs, many who were around my age, became my friends. It would have helped SO much to have a space to go to just for people my age. I think my experience would have been much different had I had some support from other young adults going through cancer.  There’s not a lot one can do to make getting torn from your world and thrown into the cancer world better, but I know from my own experience that what TCA is doing can only help.