Hear candid conversations between people conquering cancer — patients, their family and friends, and doctors and researchers working to help us all.
When Jace decided to chronicle his cancer experience online, he was looking for catharsis and camaraderie. He got both—along with a robust online community who’ve followed his entire journey in hopes of seeing the moment he fulfilled a cherished goal he made for himself: to ring the bell and declare himself cancer-free.
It started—as these things often do—with fatigue. And at first, he simply chalked it up to a busy life and a job requiring frequent travel.
But then he noticed something: There were times the fatigue kicked in when he hadn’t just gotten off a plane or done anything else particularly strenuous. “And I would look to my peers in the same age group as me, and they had this level of energy that I just didn’t have,” Jace recalls. “Intuitively, something within me just knew something wasn’t right.”
Even so, at first, Jace wrote off his concerns, telling himself it was nothing, or that it was from working hard, or that his body was just different from others’. But then came the coughing and the back pain. “At one point, it was so severe that I went to urgent care because I couldn’t wait to go see my primary care physician,” he recalls. “He gave me certain diagnoses and medications according to with those diagnoses.”
But ultimately, the diagnosis was wrong. It would be months before doctors found the actual problem: Hodgkin Lymphoma. As he processed the news of his diagnosis, Jace realized something: Facing cancer was not something he wanted to do by himself.
“I knew I needed help,” Jace recalls. “I didn’t want to take it on alone.” And so, he started sharing his diagnosis—and all the developments and news attached to it—on Instagram and TikTok.
And then something happened: Seemingly overnight, his following skyrocketed. Before he knew it, Jace had more than 700,000 followers, with whom he shared all the highs and lows, along with his ultimate goal: to ring the bell declaring himself cancer-free.
In this episode, Jace talks to Your Stories host Dr. Mark Lewis about what it’s like to see your cancer journey go viral, the importance of advocating for yourself, and the role of community when it comes to conquering cancer.
