You know the expression, “If you want to get something done, ask a working mother?” Surprising as it may seem, the same holds true for cancer patients.
Conventional wisdom holds that cancer patients are too sick and fragile to work, at least not to their full ability. That can certainly be true in some cases, sometimes tragically. And I’m not suggesting that anyone should ever feel pressured to work if they don’t feel well enough to do so. But in many instances, the stereotype that cancer patients are too compromised to work is a myth. I know because I’ve been living—and working—with an incurable type of blood cancer for more than twenty-two years.
And I’m by no means the only one doing so. As of 2025, there were an estimated 18.6 million cancer survivors in the U.S., and a study in the journal Cancer found some 60 percent of patients aged 25 to 62 continue to work during treatment.
An asset, not an anchor
A quick bit of backstory: In November 2003, as I was leaving my office one night, I slipped on a patch of ice. The next morning, I woke up with a sore hip. A year later, when the pain from the slip hadn’t gotten better, I saw my orthopedist, who ordered an MRI. When he called me in to talk about the results, he told me I had a tumor on my hip. I was 38-years-old, working in my dream job, married to a woman I loved, and the first-time father of a seven-month-old daughter. And from one second to the next, I had cancer.
Since that time, I have undergone multiple forms of treatment, going in and out of remission more times than I can count, and experienced several hospitalizations (the type of cancer I have, multiple myeloma, is treatable but not curable).
I’m a journalist, and I’ve also worked that whole time, as an editor at New York magazine, Vogue, Medium, and currently at Fast Company, without missing any more days than the average person misses. I’ve had to take a few days off here and there, and I sometimes need to work remotely—from home, a doctor’s office, a treatment facility, or the hospital—instead of in my office. But with rare exception, I’ve shown up for work after my diagnosis the same way I did before it. I’ve gotten promotions, won awards, and been laid off, just like many other people, too. Before and after work and on weekends, I wrote a book about living with my illness.
People sometimes say to me, “How brave of you to keep working through all of that.” Believe me, it has nothing to do with bravery, at least not in my case. In my case, it has to do with terror. Sit home and contemplate the dimming of the light or keep busy and keep my mind off of my illness. I also like what I do, and I have a wife, two children, and a mortgage to pay. I can’t afford not to work.
For a long time, I saw my disease as an anchor on my career. But now I’ve come to see it as an asset. In fact, I’d argue that cancer patients are uniquely valuable employees. Here’s why.
We have grit
I mentioned I’ve undergone multiple treatments. Specifically, I’ve had four rounds of radiation therapy—to my hip, ribs, spine, and nasal bone (multiple myeloma typically presents as bone lesions). I’ve had immunotherapy treatments for years at a time, each requiring weekly four- to six-hour IV infusions. I’ve had chemotherapy on two occasions, and I’ve been hospitalized as part of a cutting-edge form of treatment called CAR-T cell therapy. The side effects of those treatments have included nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, brain fog, loss of feeling in my fingers and toes, and chronic bone pain.
Not that I’d recommend it if you can avoid it, but surviving those experiences has made me a tougher, more resilient person.
