The Diagnosis: My Quarter-Life Cancer, Part 1
The "sad eyes" might have been Brianna Wellen's first sign that things were about to get weird.
Months after quietly telling both friends and the co-workers she sees every day at the alternative Chicago newspaper she writes for that she was undergoing some tests for a golf-ball-sized lump on the right side of her neck, she finally had some news. It wasn't exactly surprising, to her or to anyone in the know, but it wasn't good.
Not only was she about to start down a road she had mostly only seen in movies -- one that would eventually make her too tired to reach for the remote, but now, she had to figure out how to navigate a neverending, mostly unwanted pity party. Everything about her life was about to change, including the way her friends and strangers literally saw her.
"Not a lot of people directly said to me, like, 'I feel sorry for you,' or 'I can't believe you're going through this,'" Brianna said, "but just these looks that you get ... please don't look at me like an alien just because I have this."
The Monday after Easter Sunday 2015, Brianna sat with her parents and youngest sister across from a doctor, one of many who performed tests and biopsies on that lump on her neck since Thanksgiving the previous year. The four of them knew why the doctor had asked them down instead of calling, but the diagnosis still wouldn't quite sink in, for any of them, for many months.
Hodgkin's Lymphoma. A blood cancer. Stage 3. Chemotherapy.
A red rash immediately flooded Brianna's skin, working its way from the bottom of her feet to her forehead. Her parents and sister stared, trying to gauge her reaction to temper theirs. And then, the jokes.
"I asked what the deal was with Make-A-Wish, if I could do that," Brianna said. "My sister was, in a roundabout way, asking if me drinking alcohol caused this disease and if I could continue drinking because she knew that was an important part of my lifestyle."
Courtesy Brianna Wellen
Left to right: Brianna's younger sister, Lily; Brianna; Brianna's youngest sister, Maddy.
Courtesy Brianna Wellen
Brianna and friends, from around the time she first noticed the lump on her neck.
At 24 years old, Brianna had aged out of Make-A-Wish eligibility, but it turns out this type of cancer for someone her age isn't all that weird. The American Cancer Society estimates there have been 9,050 new cases of Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2015, about 44 percent of which are women. While it's considered a "survivable" type of cancer, it's a highly common one for people in their twenties, a particularly vulnerable period for the mental transition into adulthood, not to mention one with often limited financial resources.
On the cusp of turning 25, Brianna considers herself lucky -- had this happened a year or so later, she would no longer be eligible to stay on her dad's insurance plan. The Illinois Young Adult Dependent Coverage Law went into effect in 2009, requiring insurance plans to cover parents' dependent children up to age 26. The Affordable Care Act opened up this same door for twentysomethings when it went into effect in 2010. Throughout her treatment, Brianna's dad's insurance coverage has been crucial.
"A lot more of it than I originally anticipated is covered by insurance," she said. "But there are bills that I've gotten in the mail where I've opened them, and, oh, that's like my entire college tuition."
After the diagnosis, a plan was put in place for an aggressive six months of chemotherapy treatment, and the Wellens and friends went into action mode. A GoFundMe account went live. Friends organized a comedy show featuring some of Brianna's favorite Chicago comedians to collect some cash. Trivia night fundraisers. Care baskets from Mom with Lemonheads for that metallic chemo after-taste. Free booze.
Courtesy Brianna Wellen
Brianna dyed her dark brown hair blonde before starting chemotherapy. She eventually shaved her head.
The unfamiliar attention has been, at times, more than Brianna could process, but also crucial in making it through those first few months of intense chemotherapy sickness, isolation during a particularly vibrant summer in her favorite city and elevated anxiety that was already difficult to manage without, y'know, cancer on table.
"My already existing anxiety was put into overdrive with all the health stuff I'm dealing with," Brianna said. "So instead of worrying about stuff at work, it would be like, 'Oh my god, my nose is running. I'm probably dying.'"
Despite the reality she had been living over the past seven months, and more recently the past few weeks as she started chemotherapy, the shock of living with cancer didn't actually hit Brianna until the week of her 25th birthday. She had just finished up a round of treatment and developed a fever, which is considered a medical emergency for cancer patients. With birthday celebrations -- several, actually -- planned for the next weekend, she was hospitalized until she was stabilized.
After returning home from the hospital, Brianna recorded a video of herself on her iPad. It was the first time, two-and-a-half months since that doctor's appointment, that her diagnosis actually hit her.
"One of the things people don't talk about a lot is how much the treatments mentally affect you," she said. "Not in the sense of emotionally or psychologically, but your brain just doesn't work as well. I keep forgetting things. I want to be a writer for the rest of my life, and I hope I don't lose any part of that, through this treatment."
Jessica Galliart is TouchVision's Digital Managing Editor.
Video produced by Kerri Pang and Jessica Galliart.