My Cancer is Better than Your Cancer

I’m broke, now and forever: As soon as I start making more than $900/month, I get kicked off of Medicaid. But I can work again! And I’ve started school! Those things are much better than being dead.

So I’ve been looking for scholarships for cancer survivors. There are a surprising amount, actually; most were set up by the loved ones of some sweet child who died.

By age, education, and diagnosis, I qualify for a lot of those scholarships: You must be under the age of 26 or 28 or 30, enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program, and diagnosed with a potentially fatal form of cancer. Bonus points for exceptionally traumatic diagnosis stories (Foreign doctors! Fired! Threatened with deportation!) and horrible cancer experiences (Coma! Stage IV! Family suicide!).

But I don’t qualify, because my cancer was diagnosed after I turned 18. Never mind that I probably quietly had the disease, undiagnosed and spewing its malicious seed, since my last growth spurt at around fourteen: In the world of cancer, diagnosis is everything.

(Not to mention those pissy little fiefdoms, patients and survivors especially of breast cancer and testicular cancer, that think their diseases make a special club that only they get to be in. The Susan G. Komen Foundation actually sues other types of cancer charities for using the phrase “For the Cure.” You jags, your cancer doesn’t eat you any faster than my cancer eats me; it’s not magical just because your DNA splintered instead of mine.)

(Or maybe I just think that because the sarcoma clubs suck.)

Anyway, I’m frustrated because there are no resources for cancer of the Adult Youngs. If you’re under 18 and you get sick, that’s fucking horrible, but there are support groups for you and your parents, and Disney will fly you out, and Make a Wish will get Justin Bieber’s hair to visit you. If you’re an Old and you get cancer, you’ve got a mountain of Social Security and Medicare to land on, not to mention that you probably have people in your social circle who are familiar with your experiences and can help you.

Adult Youngs don’t have either benefit. The only book anybody had to offer was about some asshole in her 40s who thought she was too young and cute to have cancer, and that shopping at Whole Foods and doing yoga cured her. The only things that shit cures is a vitamin yuppie deficiency.