Speaker 1: This is let's be clear with Shannon Doherty. Hi, let's
Speaker 1: be clear, listeners. I'm honored to be here. I'm Alex Devorak.
Speaker 1: I'm a writer, director, a model, an executive producer of
Speaker 1: the film Bad Survivor. Today, I'll be talking about my
Speaker 1: experience being a cancer patient as a young person. I
Speaker 1: was nineteen when I got treatment, and there's so much
Speaker 1: to dive into here, into the unique experience of what
Speaker 1: us adolescents and young adults go through when we're diagnosed.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about the aftermath of omission
Speaker 1: and how I turned pain into art. I'll be discussing
Speaker 1: my modeling career and my writing projects, which include graphic novels, films,
Speaker 1: TV series and op eds that all center around Team
Speaker 1: Rebellion with dark, humor and heart. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: start today by talking about my connection to Shannon Doherty,
Speaker 1: of course, the reason why we're all here listening and
Speaker 1: tuning into her podcast. I never met Shannon in person,
Speaker 1: but her legacy has touched my life as I'm sure
Speaker 1: it has touched all of yours. Growing up especially, I
Speaker 1: was a big fan of the movie Heathers. That movie,
Speaker 1: in so many ways informed my writing and my desire
Speaker 1: to show on screen and in all the mediums that
Speaker 1: I write for insanely strong, unapologetic female characters who maybe
Speaker 1: subvert our normal expectations of what we're used to seeing
Speaker 1: women do on screen. And I feel like in real life,
Speaker 1: Shannon had such a knack for speaking uncomfortable truths, and
Speaker 1: that's something I've always felt a real kinship with her on.
Speaker 1: So when I started my writing career, I started really
Speaker 1: by publishing essays that said everything that I was afraid
Speaker 1: to say out loud to my own family and friends,
Speaker 1: but for some reason was courageous enough to publish it
Speaker 1: out into the world. And I wanted to write about
Speaker 1: all the taboo topics around a cancer diagnosis as a
Speaker 1: young person, and that's I don't know, It's really been
Speaker 1: people like Shannon who have spoken up and spoken out
Speaker 1: who have inspired me to do the same. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I was discussing the other day with a friend of
Speaker 1: mine what I wanted to share on this podcast, and
Speaker 1: I just loved what she said and I wrote it down.
Speaker 1: She said, we grew up on the OC, and our
Speaker 1: older sisters grew up on nine O two one oh,
Speaker 1: and it's so true, like in nine on two one oh,
Speaker 1: of course, and it was, you know, the symbol of
Speaker 1: like the California lifestyle. At least that's how it felt
Speaker 1: growing up on the East Coast. And it shows like
Speaker 1: nine O two one O and the OC and the
Speaker 1: hills that really inspired me growing up on the East coast,
Speaker 1: like move to La So. I grew up in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And I was just dreaming about this Cali lifestyle.
Speaker 1: I went to an all girls Catholic high school with uniforms.
Speaker 1: It was very preppy. I don't know, winters were really intense.
Speaker 1: It was just East Coast in all of the way.
Speaker 1: And I would sit and watch the OC and think like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, these kids have outdoor lockers, like they're
Speaker 1: not concerned with rain, and they're friends with these surfer guys,
Speaker 1: and there's palm trees, and I just thought it was
Speaker 1: really idyllic and wonderful. And I would sit in my
Speaker 1: childhood bedroom in high school and I would dream about
Speaker 1: moving to California and that's all that I wanted and
Speaker 1: that was truly my focus. So I worked hard in
Speaker 1: school to get a four point o GPA to like
Speaker 1: get into a school out of State, and I got
Speaker 1: into my dream school, which was Loyola Marymount University LMU
Speaker 1: in LA, right next to Lax up on the bluff,
Speaker 1: you know, overlooking all of LA and Venice Beach and
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Sign. And it was really this start of
Speaker 1: my life. And I made my best friends the first
Speaker 1: weekend of school I was there at you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know anybody. I'd been to only once in my
Speaker 1: entire life. I was a total newbie, and I really,
Speaker 1: for the first time in my life, I felt like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is where I'm supposed to be this these are
Speaker 1: my people. I knew I wanted to be in entertainment
Speaker 1: in some fashion, though I had no clue in what
Speaker 1: capacity yet, and I couldn't wait to explore that and
Speaker 1: figure out where is my place in life? And this
Speaker 1: was where all my energy lie. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: in La. It was really the start of my my independence,
Speaker 1: my growing up. And that's, of course sometimes when life
Speaker 1: likes to throw you a curveball, as it does. So's
Speaker 1: the beginning of my sophomore year. And I went home
Speaker 1: to DC for Thanksgiving break and my mom the day
Speaker 1: before Thanksgiving, she was like, well, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: you to the pediatrician. You've been sick for a few months.
Speaker 1: Let's figure out what's going on. And so I'm waiting
Speaker 1: the pediatrician's office with my mom and the doctor said
Speaker 1: something like, you know, I can give you antiotics or
Speaker 1: you can get a chest X ray. And I said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I need a chest And I'm not sure why I
Speaker 1: said that. I don't think i'd ever gotten a chest
Speaker 1: X right before. But I had been given antibiotics in
Speaker 1: my school in LA and nothing was working. And I
Speaker 1: think I was just sort of like, I just kind
Speaker 1: of get to the root of it. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the deal is, Like, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: sent home with pills and come back next week. And
Speaker 1: so they sent me down the hole to get sex ray,
Speaker 1: got it done. They gave me the results in this
Speaker 1: big Manila envelope that I'll never forget. And I walk
Speaker 1: back into the reception area and my mom and I
Speaker 1: are sitting there for hours, for hours, and there's toddlers,
Speaker 1: you know, sneezing and being sick and their parents all
Speaker 1: stressed out, and one by one, all these kids get
Speaker 1: seen and leave and seen and leave, and it was
Speaker 1: just at one point, just my mom and I and
Speaker 1: the secretaries start packing up to leave, and the nurses
Speaker 1: start packing up to leave, and I was like, this
Speaker 1: is odd. So I being nosy as I take a
Speaker 1: peek at the what's in the envelope? And I consider
Speaker 1: myself an intelligent, capable woman, but looking at the sheet
Speaker 1: of paper, I had no idea what was on it.
Speaker 1: It was it literally looked like a sheet of paper
Speaker 1: that had just one long word on it, you know,
Speaker 1: like entire paragraph of text. But I remember seeing one
Speaker 1: word and it's had like lymphocite something. And I turned
Speaker 1: my mom and I was like, Mom, what's lymphoma? And
Speaker 1: she said, oh, it's it's a type of cancer. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I've never I didn't know that,
Speaker 1: like I've never heard that before. And that was it,
Speaker 1: and I put it back in the envelope and my
Speaker 1: mom when I started talking about Thanksgiving dinner. My mom's
Speaker 1: from Puerto Rico, so we do a big Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving meal with like a roast pig and rice and beans.
Speaker 1: And we had spent the entire day my pedatrician's office,
Speaker 1: so nothing was prepared, and so we were just talking
Speaker 1: about you know, we had to like pick up carrots
Speaker 1: on the way home or something like. We were just
Speaker 1: kind of going through the usual day to day routine
Speaker 1: as if I hadn't just seen this result. I suppose
Speaker 1: none of that had sunk into either one of us.
Speaker 1: And I remember turning to my right to grab like
Speaker 1: a tissue and turning back and my mom had like
Speaker 1: scurried away into the doctor's office and the door had closed,
Speaker 1: So now I'm staying alone in like a half dark
Speaker 1: reception area. I just remember thinking like this can't be good,
Speaker 1: Like I don't this doesn't feel right. And then my
Speaker 1: mom came out like five minutes later, with like red
Speaker 1: puffy eyes, and she sat down next to me and
Speaker 1: just like stared straight ahead like no one. She wasn't
Speaker 1: looking at me, which would be the start of many
Speaker 1: people not making eye contact when needing to tell me
Speaker 1: bad news turned out. But she was staring straight ahead
Speaker 1: and she said, you have themphoma And I was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: because like you said that was cancer, and she was
Speaker 1: like yeah. And then I don't think I cried. I
Speaker 1: don't think we said anything. We just sort of sat
Speaker 1: and that thing happened in the movies where you start
Speaker 1: to see your life flash forward, and I saw, you know,
Speaker 1: the graduation I was never going to have, and the
Speaker 1: marriage and the kids, and the career and the success
Speaker 1: that I always wanted, and all those things I was
Speaker 1: never going to get because I was going to die
Speaker 1: at nineteen. And so I don't know. We just sat there,
Speaker 1: and the doctor eventually came out, and this amazing, really
Speaker 1: kind man told me that his son had had the
Speaker 1: exact same hodgkins am foma, and he had always wished
Speaker 1: that the doctor had allowed him to tell his son,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to give me that, and he did
Speaker 1: look me in the eye and he did tell me,
Speaker 1: this will be terrifying, and you will live. And he
Speaker 1: was like, go straight to the hospital, like don't go home.
Speaker 1: Don't you can't go anywhere else, go home, or excuse me,
Speaker 1: go well to your new home to the hospital, and
Speaker 1: of course I didn't listen. I went. I wanted to
Speaker 1: shower and eat food and process, and then we went
Speaker 1: and he was right. I was in the hospital for
Speaker 1: a very long time after that, and that's how I
Speaker 1: was diagnosed. So I went to Children's hospital, as he
Speaker 1: advised me to. Again, this was my pediatrician. I was nineteen,
Speaker 1: and you know, when you're a teenager, you may very
Speaker 1: well feel independent and like an adult in so many ways,
Speaker 1: and like you know everything about everything, but you're a kid,
Speaker 1: and also in so many ways. You know, maybe I
Speaker 1: was allowed to vote, but I you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying rent, I wasn't an adult. I was
Speaker 1: an adult, but all of a sudden was being faced
Speaker 1: with a very adult diagnosis and needed to make a
Speaker 1: lot of adult decisions. So I was treated in a
Speaker 1: children's hospital here in Washington, DC, and I was treated
Speaker 1: alongside toddlers and little kids, and then there was me
Speaker 1: as a teenager. It's a very strange experience being the
Speaker 1: only teen because these kids are you know, they really
Speaker 1: inspired me in a lot of ways. They were always
Speaker 1: in the coloring room and hooked up to their chemo,
Speaker 1: and their parents, you know, of course, right by their side,
Speaker 1: and but they're smiling and they want to play and
Speaker 1: they are very much still kids, which I thought was
Speaker 1: always really cool. But as a teen, you know, unfortunately
Speaker 1: or fortunately, I'm not sure I very much understand what's happening,
Speaker 1: what's going on to your body, and what your odds
Speaker 1: really are and that can be a very difficult burden.
Speaker 1: And so I was admitted into the ICU and started
Speaker 1: surgeries and chemo full time. My chemo schedule was Monday
Speaker 1: through Friday, like at nine am to six pm sort
Speaker 1: of deal. And I remember my first nurse. He was
Speaker 1: amazing Sean. I will never forget him. He was just
Speaker 1: like amazing gay man that is immediately bonded with and
Speaker 1: and I see you. I was his only patient that
Speaker 1: was awake and conscious. So I think he just was
Speaker 1: really chatty and wanted to talk with me all night
Speaker 1: and I loved that about him. And I remember him
Speaker 1: closing my blinds one day and saying, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: It's like he's like, oh, where do you go to school?
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, LM you you know, and I
Speaker 1: light lit up talking about La and my life in La.
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, it's a shame you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to drop out of school. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm but I'm not. What do you I'm never going
Speaker 1: to drop out of me Like this is no And
Speaker 1: he was like oh, okay, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: he gave me the time I needed to process. But
Speaker 1: I will never forget that moment because I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not going back to my life. Actually this
Speaker 1: this is my my life, and you have to understand.
Speaker 1: This happened over the course of several hours. So life
Speaker 1: can can throw you curveballs, but I don't know. I've
Speaker 1: always felt like the sooner, you know, the sooner you're
Speaker 1: able to accept. I'm a planner, So the sooner I'm
Speaker 1: able to accept and learn as much as I can,
Speaker 1: then I can make a plan and move forward even
Speaker 1: if it's difficult for me. Like education and understanding. You know,
Speaker 1: I was given like a cancer binder, and I studied
Speaker 1: it every day like a total weirdo. That it really
Speaker 1: gave me a lot of reassurance in some way to
Speaker 1: understand what was happening inside my body, even if it
Speaker 1: was horrific. And so, you know, the tumor that was
Speaker 1: in my chest that showed in that original X ray
Speaker 1: was large and weighing on my heart and lungs. They
Speaker 1: weren't able to operate on it, but luckily the chemo
Speaker 1: really shrunk it fairly quickly. Actually, I mean, of course
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel that way in treatment, but in hindsight,
Speaker 1: treatment did work. It was effective for me, thankfully, And
Speaker 1: you know, there is something I wanted to touch on here,
Speaker 1: which was and I don't know if this is everyone's
Speaker 1: experience in treatment or a lot of people's experience it,
Speaker 1: or is it just sort of this teenage age that
Speaker 1: I was, But I found that many times I wasn't
Speaker 1: spoken to directly right. So for instance, like my care
Speaker 1: team would be speaking to my parents out in the
Speaker 1: hallway about something that was about to happen to my body,
Speaker 1: or you know, surgery I ought to go into, or
Speaker 1: procedure or what the next step was. And I found
Speaker 1: that very odd because it was happening to me, and
Speaker 1: I was you know, I'm a teenager, but you you're
Speaker 1: your own person enough at that point. And I really
Speaker 1: worked hard, though I for sure lost this at some
Speaker 1: point in treatment, but I did work very hard in
Speaker 1: the beginning of treatment to advocate for myself and speak up,
Speaker 1: and I did in an odd way. Sometimes I have
Speaker 1: to tell people to look me in the eye and
Speaker 1: like give it to me straight. Often sometimes I would
Speaker 1: have a doctor that would have to do that. When
Speaker 1: my parents left, like there were certain things they wanted
Speaker 1: to tell me, not in front of them. It was
Speaker 1: just a really I was always kind of navigating this
Speaker 1: experience of wanting to be taken seriously, wanting to be
Speaker 1: taken seriously as an adult though being in a children's hospital,
Speaker 1: and they're obviously used to treating children and in a
Speaker 1: different way. Of course, children are going to need a
Speaker 1: different level of care than teens need. And something I
Speaker 1: just want to mention a small tangent that feels like
Speaker 1: incredibly important, is you know, I've been working really closely
Speaker 1: with Teen Cancer America and they're this incredibly wonderful organization
Speaker 1: and they're really doing the real work. They're creating facilities
Speaker 1: and programs within existing hospitals right now to help treat
Speaker 1: teens and help meet their needs that right now are
Speaker 1: not are really not being met. And teens really do
Speaker 1: need something different than the grown adult and the elder thing.
Speaker 1: They need something different than the youth and the kids
Speaker 1: in treatment. It just feels really important to mention, so
Speaker 1: please check out Team Cancer America. They're doing such such
Speaker 1: wonderful things. I'm really honored to be working with them
Speaker 1: and an advocate for them. So in my family of four,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, my mom is from Puerto Rico, my
Speaker 1: dad is from Prague, and I have my big sister
Speaker 1: who's one year older than me, and the four of us.
Speaker 1: You know, of course, our families are far away and
Speaker 1: in different places all over Europe in Puerto Rico, and
Speaker 1: so the four of us in DC like this close
Speaker 1: little unit. And my sister is a hypochondriac, and it
Speaker 1: was very afraid to visit me in the hospital, though
Speaker 1: she definitely conquered her fear and did it. But I
Speaker 1: do I bring this up because I remember feeling like okay.
Speaker 1: When I was diagnosed, I immediately felt like okay, of
Speaker 1: the four of us, I'm this makes sense. I'm glad
Speaker 1: it's me, Like I'm the one that can do this.
Speaker 1: I can I can handle this, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I could handle seeing any one of them go through it.
Speaker 1: And I used my competitiveness I always grew up as
Speaker 1: an athlete to help me through treatment in so many ways.
Speaker 1: So for instance, I used this point system. I would
Speaker 1: use this point system in my mind to survive treatment.
Speaker 1: I would play these games with myself. So for instance,
Speaker 1: when I was receiving radiation, I'm you know, you're laying
Speaker 1: down in a bed and they're dropping you in and
Speaker 1: I had a radiation mass to make sure that you know,
Speaker 1: my neck and shoulders and head weren't moving, of course,
Speaker 1: to make sure that they're radiating the right area. And
Speaker 1: right before they're putting on the mask and things, and
Speaker 1: they're sort of boulting you in place. The nurses come
Speaker 1: in and they're like adjusting me, and so I would
Speaker 1: play this point system, Like if they had to adjust
Speaker 1: me twice, then I like lost points, so they had
Speaker 1: to if they didn't have adjust me at all, Like
Speaker 1: I got a certain amount of points, and I would
Speaker 1: have this point system, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I would like rank in my own head. And I
Speaker 1: never told anybody this, but I would rank all my
Speaker 1: points to see if, like did I win. And I
Speaker 1: know that the journeys imported not wit necessarily winning or losing,
Speaker 1: but that's just not how my brain works. Like I
Speaker 1: love to win things. I loved to score goals and
Speaker 1: winning helps me and I like competing with myself and
Speaker 1: so I did a point system with just about anything
Speaker 1: and everything, and it helped me get through treatment. And
Speaker 1: I have written a young adult graphic novel about called
Speaker 1: Chemo Kids, and it's about a girl a teen girl,
Speaker 1: Dave All, who is being treated at a children's hospital,
Speaker 1: and the kids that night come alive with this fantasy
Speaker 1: world and they teach her how to play games, mind
Speaker 1: games that win her points and it helps her cope
Speaker 1: with her daytime. Like, it's just something I find fascinating now,
Speaker 1: the mind games I played to survive, because it's something
Speaker 1: I don't think I was necessarily aware of. I think
Speaker 1: in the moment, I thought, I am so painfully bored
Speaker 1: that I have now created this odd fantasy life. But
Speaker 1: looking back now as an adult and realizing, wow, that
Speaker 1: was really that took a lot of ingenuity Like that,
Speaker 1: that's fascinating to me what the mind can do to
Speaker 1: get you through something really dark, you know, finding something
Speaker 1: light and playful. And I've always been a person that like,
Speaker 1: I need a finish line, and of course with something
Speaker 1: like cancer, there's not always you know, you don't really
Speaker 1: you know it's going to come out to hour by hour,
Speaker 1: day by day, or month by month. So I needed
Speaker 1: to sort of set this finish line at the end
Speaker 1: of each day to show something for myself, you know,
Speaker 1: to really continue. And you know, the day that I
Speaker 1: was told I was cancer free, it was interesting. I
Speaker 1: was twenty and my doctors pulled me into this room.
Speaker 1: I knew every single inch of my hospital wing, of course,
Speaker 1: and they brought me into this room I'd never seen before.
Speaker 1: It was like a door that felt like it just appeared,
Speaker 1: and they brought me in and it was like a
Speaker 1: computer room, and I had all these wires and they
Speaker 1: sat me and my parents down and we were in
Speaker 1: these office chairs with the wheels on them. And you
Speaker 1: have to understand at this point, I'm on so much medication,
Speaker 1: and you know, I very much felt like there was
Speaker 1: chemo my system though I was just finishing chemo and
Speaker 1: moving onto radiation, and you know, sleeping pills and anti
Speaker 1: nausea meds and anti anxiety meds and morphine and just
Speaker 1: so much going on in my body. And I'm staring
Speaker 1: at these wires for some reason, and maybe I'm a
Speaker 1: little OCD and needed I don't know. I was just like,
Speaker 1: what is this? It didn't I just really did not
Speaker 1: know what they were to tell me. And they brought
Speaker 1: up on one of the screens my scans, and I
Speaker 1: had sort of an obsession with scans. It really felt
Speaker 1: like something real and tangible that I could see and
Speaker 1: like measure progress. And so they opened up a scan,
Speaker 1: which I thought looked really cool, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what's on it, and the doctor showed me
Speaker 1: that my tumor had shrunk into such an extent that
Speaker 1: it was dead and now considered scar tissue, and the
Speaker 1: cancer that was on the other parts of my lymph
Speaker 1: nodes were all gone and it hadn't spread to my
Speaker 1: bone marrow, and I was now are free. And my
Speaker 1: parents were in tears and hugging me and kissing me
Speaker 1: and so joyful and relieved that their daughter was going
Speaker 1: to be okay. And I just sat there staring at
Speaker 1: the chords, and I had no idea what to say,
Speaker 1: and I felt my doctor staring at me, sort of
Speaker 1: waiting for something. And I will never forget one of
Speaker 1: my doctors saying, this is the part where you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be happy, and I wasn't happy, and I didn't
Speaker 1: believe them. I don't know if that's odd to say,
Speaker 1: but I was like, you know, someone's telling me you're healthy,
Speaker 1: but this is not. This is not healthy, Like I
Speaker 1: know healthy that I'm not. I feel terrible. I look,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? I look very much ill,
Speaker 1: and I remember just sort of arguing actually a little bit,
Speaker 1: and being like, but if I'm cancer free, why am
Speaker 1: I going into tradation? And you know, I'd had friends
Speaker 1: who had cancer and it came back, and so I
Speaker 1: just wasn't trusting, and I certainly didn't feel happy. I
Speaker 1: felt very confused and a bit ashamed that I wasn't happy,
Speaker 1: and a bit ashamed that I wasn't maybe throwing the
Speaker 1: parade or thinking them as I probably should have been
Speaker 1: or could have been, but I wasn't. I wasn't feeling
Speaker 1: those emotions. And I hope that anyone listening who has
Speaker 1: felt that way before can release some of that shame
Speaker 1: and know that you're not alone if you don't immediately
Speaker 1: feel what others are expecting you to feel, and it's okay,
Speaker 1: It's okay, right of course, Now looking back, I can
Speaker 1: say I was in the midst of intense trauma, and
Speaker 1: it is okay that I wasn't smiling or laughing or
Speaker 1: didn't feel relieved yet you know, like that's that actually
Speaker 1: kind of tracks that makes sense. And I sort of
Speaker 1: felt like the relief in the celebration was for my
Speaker 1: family to feel not me because I kind of felt like, welly,
Speaker 1: I still have this burden, you know, I kind of
Speaker 1: still felt like I still have all this to go
Speaker 1: through and to I was still in the midst. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think I realized I was going
Speaker 1: to live until after radiation. And I went home home
Speaker 1: for real home, like to my childhood home. And I
Speaker 1: had never really been left alone for so many months, right,
Speaker 1: Like you have your care team and your doctors and
Speaker 1: your nurses, and you're always being poked and prodded, and
Speaker 1: you know, my parents like watching me like a hawk.
Speaker 1: And I was never alone, and like truly not even
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom. And and I was in
Speaker 1: my kitchen and I was left alone for a few minutes,
Speaker 1: and we always cook family dinner, and my mom had
Speaker 1: asked me to like make this salad. And I was
Speaker 1: cutting into this tomato, and I just started crying. And
Speaker 1: I felt like I felt like I had I I
Speaker 1: was supposed to die or something, and here I was
Speaker 1: cutting this tomato and I was still alive enough to
Speaker 1: like cut this beautiful, perfect tomato that came out of
Speaker 1: the earth. And I just felt this insane moment of
Speaker 1: relief and gratitude for this tomato. And I guess how interesting,
Speaker 1: right that maybe that was the reaction someone had wanted
Speaker 1: me to have months prior, and now it was truly
Speaker 1: hitting me. And who knows, maybe it was all the
Speaker 1: morphine that had finally wore off and now emotions could
Speaker 1: come to the surface. I don't know, but I just
Speaker 1: remember this beautifully perfect tomato for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: I will forever remember this tomato. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's important to speak a bit about remission. I
Speaker 1: think there's a moment in time where our community is
Speaker 1: able to rest easy and you know, kind of check
Speaker 1: the box of she's okay, you know, and sort of
Speaker 1: like the castroles stop coming to the door, and care
Speaker 1: packages kind of stopped in the letters, and you know,
Speaker 1: and it's quiet, and now you're home and may very
Speaker 1: well be, you know, addicted to the meds you've been
Speaker 1: on for so long, and your doctors will sort of like,
Speaker 1: see you in three months, and you're like, what, I
Speaker 1: see you every second every day, like we're in this
Speaker 1: for life. I truly remember feeling like my doctors broke
Speaker 1: up with me the day they told me I was
Speaker 1: cancer free, and that is why I made the film
Speaker 1: Bad Survivor, which is in film festivals right now, and
Speaker 1: it's really about the feeling of being a terrible survivor.
Speaker 1: I am always, in my mind for some reason, told myself, wow,
Speaker 1: I'm not pretty bad survivor, you know. And I grew
Speaker 1: up watching the movie A Walk to Remember, not just
Speaker 1: watching like idolight, being obsessed with the movie I Walk
Speaker 1: to Remember, and still I think it's like beautiful and iconic,
Speaker 1: but being obsessed with it prior to getting cancer as
Speaker 1: a teenager and then getting cancer as a teenager is
Speaker 1: wild because I really truly thought, well, when I'm bald,
Speaker 1: you know, like the hottest guy in school is going
Speaker 1: to fall in love with me, and I'll, you know,
Speaker 1: just like gently pass on with like long braided hair
Speaker 1: after like our summer of love. And that is not
Speaker 1: whatsoever what happened. You know, Like little kids would scream
Speaker 1: and run the other way when they saw me on
Speaker 1: the street because they were scared of my bald head.
Speaker 1: And certainly no one fell in love with me. And
Speaker 1: I was definitely not an inspiration, and I you know, wasn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't raising millions of dollars for cancer research. I
Speaker 1: wasn't talking about my experience. I wasn't brave, though everyone
Speaker 1: called me that. I was a total top mess. I
Speaker 1: was processing survivor's guilt in so many ways. I had
Speaker 1: so many people around me die of cancer, and I
Speaker 1: was like the last one standing, and that concept didn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me, because like, why that doesn't That
Speaker 1: does not make sense to me. So my friend Jocelyn
Speaker 1: was like my cancer mentor or like very godmother or something.
Speaker 1: Though she would hate for me to say that, but
Speaker 1: she grew up in the house next to me, and
Speaker 1: she was just a few years older than me when
Speaker 1: she got cancer, and she had been in remission, it
Speaker 1: had come back, had been remission, it had come back.
Speaker 1: And when I got cancer, I was very isolated and
Speaker 1: home alone and in my bom and wouldn't really let
Speaker 1: visitors in the house and would just told me, you know,
Speaker 1: at one point when I was incredibly sick, and you know,
Speaker 1: just like a shut door kind of energy, And if
Speaker 1: Josson showed up, I was like, oh my god, yes,
Speaker 1: go go yeah, bring her and her please bring her in.
Speaker 1: And she was the only person I would talk to
Speaker 1: and the only person I would listen to and you know,
Speaker 1: she taught me what mouthwashed to use, because you know,
Speaker 1: this chemo med's going to give you mouth sores. And
Speaker 1: someone had brought flowers and she's like, no, no, you can't
Speaker 1: have these flowers because of this allergy. And she just
Speaker 1: knew all the things I didn't know, Like, no one
Speaker 1: taught me how to have cancer. I didn't know I
Speaker 1: did what I was doing. I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do this. And there are certain things that your doctors
Speaker 1: tell you, and there's a lot of things that they don't,
Speaker 1: and you kind of learned the hard way how to
Speaker 1: get used to this cancer life. And thank God for
Speaker 1: Jocelyn because she just taught me so much. And she
Speaker 1: was the only person I felt like I could be
Speaker 1: in the same room with and like my shoulders could
Speaker 1: kind of relax and I wasn't being judged. I could
Speaker 1: just be me despite being cancer me, now, you know,
Speaker 1: because cancer me sort of seemed to trigger a lot
Speaker 1: of people, but not Jocelyn, like it could just it
Speaker 1: was okay to be me when things were really dark
Speaker 1: in treatment, she I was on the couch, I kind
Speaker 1: of you know, I couldn't get up from the couch
Speaker 1: for a long time, and she uh came over to
Speaker 1: me as I was laying down, and she was like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is good that you have the TV on. Just
Speaker 1: you know, have something on that's funny. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you laugh whatever, just let it play. It's going
Speaker 1: to help pass time and take up space. And she
Speaker 1: was like, see the clock under the TV. You need
Speaker 1: to live in ten minute increments. You're thinking too far ahead.
Speaker 1: You need if you convince yourself that it's ten ten
Speaker 1: am right now, okay, And if you get to ten
Speaker 1: twenty am, that means you live. And then when it
Speaker 1: hits it twenty you will make it to ten thirty.
Speaker 1: If you make it to ten thirty, you will live.
Speaker 1: And so for a while I was living in ten
Speaker 1: minute increments. And when they said you're gonna live a
Speaker 1: long life, my doctor said to me, I did not
Speaker 1: know how to process that. And I thought, that's crazy
Speaker 1: that I live in ten minute increments. What do you
Speaker 1: mean you want me to live to ninety plus if
Speaker 1: this is life? I don't think I can do ninety plus,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I at some point started to
Speaker 1: get good scans back and back and back, and I thought,
Speaker 1: oh no, why maybe I am going to live a
Speaker 1: long life, and you know, everyone else has passed away,
Speaker 1: and I have to figure out why I'm still here,
Speaker 1: or maybe not why if that's something even you can
Speaker 1: figure out, but how to make the most of this,
Speaker 1: Like I can't sit in wallow at the old life
Speaker 1: that I no longer have and lost, you know, and
Speaker 1: the friendships lost and the school and the new life lost.
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to have to accept where I am
Speaker 1: today and move forward with some type of new self
Speaker 1: if truly I'm gonna have a long life, Like I've
Speaker 1: got to figure this out. And so really like accepting
Speaker 1: and rebuilding for me looked like attempting to gain some
Speaker 1: type of control back. So there was a time where
Speaker 1: you would walk in I would walk into a Barnes
Speaker 1: and Noble and that whole self help section where they
Speaker 1: have the shelves, they have the table of it all
Speaker 1: dayed out. I had read every single book in self
Speaker 1: help section more than once, mind you, And I was
Speaker 1: actually a little annoyed at one point because I was like,
Speaker 1: we need to publish some new you know, I'm devouring these.
Speaker 1: I need more, I need to learn everything. And I
Speaker 1: really became a student of finding people often successful people
Speaker 1: because they were easier to find to research. I wanted
Speaker 1: to find people who had been through traumas worse than mine.
Speaker 1: My dad always taught me, like, never feel sorry for yourself.
Speaker 1: You there's always someone worse off. There's always someone going
Speaker 1: through something, something worse, which is absolutely always true for me.
Speaker 1: That's how I feel. And so, you know how I
Speaker 1: wanted to learn how someone else had gone through something
Speaker 1: worse than me and transformed their life like. I wanted
Speaker 1: to learn how was someone joyful after trauma and not
Speaker 1: just joyful, but like full Like how did someone rebuild
Speaker 1: their life, how did they re enter society, how did
Speaker 1: they have a full like? How are they successful? How
Speaker 1: did they go after what they wanted? How did they
Speaker 1: pursue their dreams again? When at the time I was
Speaker 1: afraid to walk outside. I thought a piano would fall
Speaker 1: and hit me in the head. I really was scared
Speaker 1: of life, very very scared, and I had this goal
Speaker 1: of you know, I wanted no one. I wanted people
Speaker 1: to see me, to meet me, someone brand new. I
Speaker 1: wanted to walk into a room and I wanted someone
Speaker 1: to meet me and have no idea I had ever
Speaker 1: been through trauma Like that was my goal was to
Speaker 1: be such a light in the room that someone saying, oh,
Speaker 1: she's probably had such like an easy life and a
Speaker 1: perfect child, like that still makes me smile. I honestly
Speaker 1: think that is like the best compliment ever. And then
Speaker 1: I wanted to have sort of like this like the
Speaker 1: secret in the back of my mind just for me
Speaker 1: to be like I've been to Helen back, but no
Speaker 1: one has to know that I really felt during treatment.
Speaker 1: If I walked into a room, I was sort of
Speaker 1: this like darkness on not knowing, never on purpose, without
Speaker 1: having said saying a word. I was sort of like
Speaker 1: reminding people of death. And I lowered the energy of
Speaker 1: the room and people got really shifty and wanted to leave.
Speaker 1: And if I set a scent, if I even mentioned
Speaker 1: the word, can't you know forget it? Like so, I
Speaker 1: wanted the opposite. I wanted the opposite. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a literal ray of sunshine and be bigger than life.
Speaker 1: And I would study people like Audrey Hepburn because I
Speaker 1: would watch her movies all night. I was in insomniac,
Speaker 1: I couldn't sleep, so I'd spent all night watching Audrey
Speaker 1: hepburn movies, and she seemed so like she floated on screen,
Speaker 1: and she was light and airy, and no one knew
Speaker 1: all this trauma. She had been through war and had
Speaker 1: a really difficult childhood, and people see this starlet on camera,
Speaker 1: and I just thought, she brings me joy when I
Speaker 1: watch her. And I wanted people to feel that way
Speaker 1: when they met me, or watched me in some way,
Speaker 1: or read my writing or and so I was finding
Speaker 1: all these tools to take little bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: what had worked for other people. So I started to
Speaker 1: see a ton of healers, because it's not just obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, celebrities and well known people who have something
Speaker 1: to offer us, though they may write, but it is
Speaker 1: truly anyone I met. I wanted to learn what worked
Speaker 1: for them in life, like why were they happy? How
Speaker 1: did they get too happy? Like how does one do
Speaker 1: this right? And so, for instance, I went to get
Speaker 1: a massage, and this messuse was just like she actually
Speaker 1: changed my life in so many ways. I saw her
Speaker 1: for a long time, and I told her once I
Speaker 1: shared with her before session, I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone keeps telling me everything's going to be okay, Everything's
Speaker 1: going to be okay, and God has a plan for
Speaker 1: you and everything's gonna be okay. And I kept thinking, like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. How do you know everything's gonna be okay?
Speaker 1: Like why are you telling me it's gonna be okay?
Speaker 1: I kind of found it difficult, and she said to me, well,
Speaker 1: maybe everything could be okay, you know, like maybe it could,
Speaker 1: And just that one sentence kind of changed my life.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, like let me allow some room
Speaker 1: for could. And I just found these little bits and
Speaker 1: pieces from healers and friends and celebrities and anyone I
Speaker 1: could to start changing my mindset, and I was able
Speaker 1: to really start to rebuild my life. It's crazy to say.
Speaker 1: I transferred to a school in DC and I graduated
Speaker 1: while doing all of this studying on my own about
Speaker 1: like life and joy, and I moved to New York.
Speaker 1: I got an internship at seventeen magazine, which was like
Speaker 1: my dream to be in the fashion closet of seventeen magazine.
Speaker 1: And one day I was watching this model. We were
Speaker 1: styling a model for an editorial photoshoot, and of course
Speaker 1: I'm behind the camera, She's in front of the camera,
Speaker 1: and she was really in charge of her body and
Speaker 1: like taking ownership and so beautiful and wonderful and moving
Speaker 1: just like just in full confidence. And I just remember thinking,
Speaker 1: like I want to do that, I want to feel that.
Speaker 1: And that was the start of my modeling career. I
Speaker 1: got signed in New York and I Milan in LA
Speaker 1: and I started to travel the world to get paid
Speaker 1: to model, and was the this was what I always wanted,
Speaker 1: right like this life where no one knew what I
Speaker 1: had been through, and I was starting to really fulfill it,
Speaker 1: right like I was on the runways and like quite
Speaker 1: literally having just come from you know, a scan, and
Speaker 1: I was keeping in a secret and I wasn't telling anyone,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to define myself by something other than
Speaker 1: my cancer diagnosis. And that worked for a while for
Speaker 1: several years. It felt empowering until I realized, I'm covering
Speaker 1: up my port scar, I'm maybe covering up the old me,
Speaker 1: and that I don't I felt this sense of like
Speaker 1: I don't deserve that, Like let me let me reintegrate
Speaker 1: both sides of my life, my cancer journey and this
Speaker 1: new fresh life in Manhattan that I was having. And
Speaker 1: so I started to write and I started to pour
Speaker 1: this into an essay for the Huffington Post that I published,
Speaker 1: which was really like my coming out with the truth story,
Speaker 1: and I was able to share with my agents at
Speaker 1: the time, my new friends in Manhattan. No one knew
Speaker 1: I was a cancer survivor and what I was going through,
Speaker 1: as you know, through these many years in remission, and
Speaker 1: it was incredibly, incredibly liberating. And I highly suggest to
Speaker 1: anyone listening to find ways to pour your trauma and
Speaker 1: what you've been through, if possible, into art. That can
Speaker 1: be anything, painting, writing, and you don't have to share
Speaker 1: it with anyone. I chose to at one point because
Speaker 1: that felt empowering for me, but you don't have to.
Speaker 1: It can be in a diary, but allow yourself to
Speaker 1: tell yourself your own narrative. And for me, this full
Speaker 1: full circle moment of turning my pain into art is
Speaker 1: my film Bad Survivor. It's this story about a girl
Speaker 1: broken up with by her doctors who has to come
Speaker 1: home to her multicultural family, just like I did, and
Speaker 1: put the pieces of her life back together. And what
Speaker 1: was most satisfying about this film is well, in a
Speaker 1: odd way, playing the main character. You know, I wrote it,
Speaker 1: directed it, and started it, and this main character gets
Speaker 1: to turn to camera and say all the sassy, naughty
Speaker 1: things that she never got to say in real life,
Speaker 1: and it is an incredibly therapeutic, really funny moment. It's
Speaker 1: really bringing dark humor to a day that was actually
Speaker 1: probably had no humor for me in real life, you know,
Speaker 1: but I'm able to bring back to it all of
Speaker 1: the hilarious things that I was actually thinking in my head,
Speaker 1: all those mind games that I used to play. And
Speaker 1: one thing I want to touch on, which I find
Speaker 1: really important and interesting, is that screening Bad Survivor at
Speaker 1: film festivals now getting a sense of are people able
Speaker 1: to find the humor in a cancer story? Right? I
Speaker 1: think we're used to seeing the sort of over romanticized
Speaker 1: young people's version of cancer stories where they fall in love,
Speaker 1: and then maybe the really melodramatic sort of adult versions,
Speaker 1: And this is that in between that teen story, right,
Speaker 1: Like that angsty teenager who's going through all the same things,
Speaker 1: who probably just wants to lose her virginity and make
Speaker 1: it through finals, but she has all of these intense
Speaker 1: life and death decisions to make at the same time.
Speaker 1: And in film festivals, I'm finding that In the first punchline,
Speaker 1: the audience is a little like, are we okay? Is
Speaker 1: it okay to laugh at this? And by the second
Speaker 1: and the third one, they're realizing that the main character
Speaker 1: is laughing at herself. It is okay to laugh. It
Speaker 1: is Oh, just because she's bald does not mean she
Speaker 1: doesn't have a sense of humor, and people really rest
Speaker 1: and relax. And the biggest laugh that shocked me, honestly
Speaker 1: was when the title Bad Survivor in huge capital letters
Speaker 1: is just thrown on screen and there was like a
Speaker 1: roar of laughter, and I was like, oh, wow, how
Speaker 1: interesting people find Bad Survivor the title funny. That's just
Speaker 1: something I've been calling myself all of these years. Bad
Speaker 1: Survivor the film is truly just the start of something bigger.
Speaker 1: It's the start of the TV series that I'm developing.
Speaker 1: So I just want to say, you know, if anyone
Speaker 1: out there is listening and they feel they're in treatment
Speaker 1: or in remission, and I don't know, you may be
Speaker 1: bald and weird and sarcastic, and certain friends may no
Speaker 1: longer be around, and it might feel like no one
Speaker 1: gets you. But I do. I do, and we do,
Speaker 1: and there's this community of us, and I feel like
Speaker 1: our stories really do deserve to be told. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in today. It's been an absolute
Speaker 1: treat to get to share the same airwaves as Shannon's
Speaker 1: already and her legacy absolutely lives on, and I so
Speaker 1: appreciate you all for listening. If anyone is interested in
Speaker 1: watching my short film and learning more about it, Bad Survivor,
Speaker 1: please feel free to check out Bad Survivor dot com
Speaker 1: to see when we'll be screening in a city near you,
Speaker 1: and to follow me and see all the latest on
Speaker 1: all my projects. You can go to Alexdoborak dot com
Speaker 1: or go ahead and follow me on Instagram. My handle
Speaker 1: is at It's Alex Devorek and of course if you
Speaker 1: google my name, all of these will come up, so
Speaker 1: no worries. I'm easy to find. If this podcast resonated
Speaker 1: with you in any way, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Please feel free to reach out. I love you all.
Speaker 1: Thank you,