More Than Just Surgery: Claiming My Story as a Melanoma Survivor

When I was diagnosed with melanoma at 22, I didn’t think I had the right to call myself a cancer survivor.

I hadn’t gone through chemotherapy. I didn’t lose my hair. My treatment plan involved “just surgery.” Compared to what I had seen others go through, it felt… small. I heard myself downplaying it to friends, family—even doctors—trying to make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal.

But here’s the truth: a cancer diagnosis at any age, and of any stage, changes everything.

It shakes your sense of safety. It puts your future on hold. It forces you into a world of medical appointments, pathology reports, and what-ifs that most 22-year-olds are blissfully unaware of.

Yes, my treatment was multiple surgeries. But it was still cancer. It was still weeks of waiting for biopsy results, still a fresh scar I wasn’t ready to explain, still sleepless nights wondering if it would come back. And maybe hardest of all—it was the feeling of being totally alone in it.

At that age, my peers were focused on graduating, job-hunting, traveling, falling in love. I was navigating fear, healing, and a strange in-between space where I felt both incredibly lucky and deeply disconnected.

I didn’t “look sick.” I didn’t have a port or a hospital wristband. And that made it harder to talk about what I was going through. I didn’t know where I fit. Was I allowed to feel the weight of it all if others had it “worse”? The answer is yes. We all are.

Cancer in the Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) years is unique. It disrupts identity, independence, and plans that are just beginning to take shape. It can be incredibly isolating—especially when your experience doesn’t fit the “traditional” cancer narrative.

But here’s what I’ve learned: there is no one way to be a cancer survivor. You don’t have to earn that title through a certain treatment or timeline. You earn it by living through something that changes you. And I did. I am a survivor.