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You know the expression, \u201cIf you want to get something done, ask a working mother?\u201d Surprising as it may seem, the same holds true for cancer patients.<\/p>\n
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\u2019m not suggesting that anyone should ever feel pressured to work if they don\u2019t 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\u2019ve been living\u2014and working\u2014with an incurable type of blood cancer for more than twenty-two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
And I\u2019m by no means the only one doing so. As of 2025, there were an estimated 18.6 million cancer survivors<\/a> in the U.S., and a study in the journal Cancer<\/em> found some 60 percent of patients aged 25 to 62 continue to work during treatment.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m a journalist, and I\u2019ve also worked that whole time, as an editor at New York<\/em> magazine, Vogue<\/em>, Medium, and currently at Fast Company<\/em>, without missing any more days than the average person misses. I\u2019ve had to take a few days off here and there, and I sometimes need to work remotely\u2014from home, a doctor\u2019s office, a treatment facility, or the hospital\u2014instead of in my office. But with rare exception, I\u2019ve shown up for work after my diagnosis the same way I did before it. I\u2019ve 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<\/a> about living with my illness.<\/p>\n People sometimes say to me, \u201cHow brave of you to keep working through all of that.\u201d 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\u2019t afford not to work.<\/p>\n For a long time, I saw my disease as an anchor on my career. But now I\u2019ve come to see it as an asset. In fact, I\u2019d argue that cancer patients are uniquely valuable employees. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n I mentioned I\u2019ve undergone multiple treatments. Specifically, I\u2019ve had four rounds of radiation therapy\u2014to my hip, ribs, spine, and nasal bone (multiple myeloma typically presents as bone lesions). I\u2019ve had immunotherapy treatments for years at a time, each requiring weekly four- to six-hour IV infusions. I\u2019ve had chemotherapy on two occasions, and I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n Not that I\u2019d recommend it if you can avoid it, but surviving those experiences has made me a tougher, more resilient person.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\nAn asset, not an anchor<\/h2>\n
We have grit<\/h2>\n