Ten years ago, Ung Cancer gave Johanna a sense of community during a time otherwise filled with uncertainty. Today, she is sharing her story during Pink Month, for everyone who is going through it right now.
Johanna was 27, had just fallen in love, was a newly graduated communications professional, and had moved back home to Örebro when the letter from the hospital arrived. It said she would need to bring a close relative with her. "That's when you realize that things can't be all right," she says.
It was a Friday. The fear of death hung over her like a wet blanket all weekend, and on Monday morning she called the hospital herself and asked to come in. She brought her best friend. The doctor said they had found a malignant tumor and told her not to go home and Google it. "But I couldn't help myself," Johanna says.
That's how she found Ung Cancer. "When I found the network, I felt calmer", she says. At the oncology clinic, she was the only one her age.
You share the diagnosis, but you don't share where you are in life. As a young person, you are in the middle of life. You are thinking about having children, being sexually active, going out and working. And then you get cancer on top of it all
, Johanna says.
At Ung Cancer, she found the sense of community she had been missing. She received support in the form of contributions toward gym and swimming memberships, and she took part in rehabilitation, member meetings, and Pärldagar. She also became involved: together with a colleague, she attended oncology conferences and went to Parliament to speak about disability insurance and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. "I was able to make something valuable out of it," she says. "And I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own."
During that time, she wrote a blog. When she had moved on, she wrote a final post for newly diagnosed people: "I am well. I feel great. I'm just finished with this part now. I am not dead. I am alive."
She did it for a reason. When she herself was new to the disease, she had been looking for other bloggers and found several who had suddenly stopped writing. "I needed an ending," she says.
Can you live a full, long life after a diagnosis? And they are everywhere. But you don't see them.
Today, ten years later, she is 37. She lives with the scars and memories and notices that her body enters a different phase at the same time every year. But cancer is part of her story, not the whole story. "One day you just move on. Then it becomes part of your story, part of your baggage."
Today, above all, Johanna wants to convey hope. "There must be stories that give hope and faith," she says.
It will be okay.
