Hear candid conversations between people conquering cancer — patients, their family and friends, and doctors and researchers working to help us all.
The first cancer diagnosis was scary enough.
“I feel like Hollywood actually gets this moment pretty darn right,” Emma says, recalling the day—not long before her 18th birthday—that she learned she had cancer. “The world around you kind of slows down, you get tunnel vision, maybe a little dizzy. The only thing you can really hear is your breathing and your heart rate.”
She remembers falling over and her brother catching her. She remembers everyone crying and the panic that permeated the atmosphere. But in the hours immediately after, she remembers feeling nothing. “Looking back, it was the start of a panic attack, which I think is a valid reaction in a moment like that. But the initial first moments were just a lot of nothing, a lot of heartbeat, a lot of breathing until I was able to come out of the initial shock.”
Eventually—following multiple rounds of chemotherapy—Emma was declared cancer-free. But then came the second diagnosis.
“The key difference between the first and second time is that the first time, you have fear of the unknown. You don't know what's coming for you, and you don’t know what you don’t know,” Emma says. This time, however, she knew all too well. “I did know what was coming for me. I know what I'm going to be facing. And I would argue that that is almost worse. But, if you're gonna relapse, there's only one positive: You know how to do it better this time.”
In this episode of Your Stories, Emma joins her oncologist, Conquer Cancer-funded researcher Dr. Molly Taylor, for a candid discussion about resilience, recovery, and what helped her make a major comeback after facing cancer twice.
It's a reality that bears out in statistics. According to one 2023 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an estimated 40 percent of childhood cancer survivors go on to experience depression. Another study, this one in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, found that 75 percent of children with cancer will experience PTSD during or after treatment.
“We have known for a long time that physical and mental health are connected,” Dr. Molly Taylor says. “If we can understand how stress is related to the development and trajectory of disease, we can develop better ways to support patients and families throughout their cancer experience.”
Learn how Dr. Taylor used support from a Young Investigator Award to test a resilience-building program for young people with cancer, exploring how mental, behavioral, and environmental factors interact with the immune system to affect patient outcomes.
