I don’t know if I’m just in a particularly irritated mood today, or if it’s because I just do not feel good, but every commercial break on Pluto TV seems to remind me that I have cancer.
It could be the algorithm. Maybe it’s because I’ve looked up so many treatments, read countless studies, joined support groups, and clicked on too many cancer articles. Whatever the reason, my commercial breaks are now filled with ads for medications, cancer centers, and smiling patients discussing treatment options.
Most of the time, I tune it out. Cancer is already part of every aspect of my life, so I don’t need commercials to remind me. But today, something caught my attention.
When another ad for metastatic cancer came on, I noticed that none of the people shown looked like me or many others I know who live with this disease.
The patients in these ads were older and retired. They spent time with grandchildren, enjoyed slower days, etc. Those stories are important, and those patients deserve to be seen. But they aren’t the only ones living with metastatic cancer.
What stands out to me is how often this is the image people see. When most people hear ‘metastatic cancer,’ they picture someone much older—someone who has already lived most of their life. They think of grandparents, retirees, and people who have reached milestones that younger patients are still hoping for.
But the truth is, more and more people with metastatic cancer don’t fit that image at all.
I was diagnosed with de novo stage 4 metastatic breast cancer when I was 35. Back then, I wasn’t thinking about retirement or grandchildren. I was focused on building my career, enjoying my marriage, traveling, and planning the next decades of my life. Instead, I had to learn medical terms, sit through chemo appointments, and try to understand what it meant to live with a disease that can’t be cured.
When I look at the metastatic breast cancer community now, I see so many women whose lives look a lot like mine.
I see women in their twenties, thirties, and forties. Some are raising young kids while juggling treatment. Others are planning weddings, working on their careers, going to school, or trying to start families. Many worry about daycare costs, paying the mortgage, keeping health insurance, and figuring out how to keep working while dealing with treatment side effects.
A lot of us are still right in the middle of building our lives.
This reality brings a unique kind of grief that people often miss. Living with metastatic cancer is hard at any age, but it’s especially tough to get a terminal diagnosis when you’re still planning your future, and suddenly everything feels uncertain. Many of us are mourning milestones we haven’t reached yet—children we hoped for, careers we were building, trips we wanted to take, and years we thought we’d have.
At the same time, we’re expected to keep going. Life continues moving forward even when your world has been completely rearranged.I often feel this is the side of metastatic cancer the public rarely sees. People notice awareness campaigns, pink ribbons, and fundraising walks. But they don’t always see the 37-year-old woman logging into work after an oncology appointment because she needs her health insurance. They don’t see the young couple looking into adoption because cancer changed their plans for parenthood. They don’t see the hours spent managing medications, side effects, insurance paperwork, scans, lab work, and the constant worry that the next scan could change everything. Those stories are real, too.
In fact, these stories are more common than many people realize.
Advances in treatment have helped people with metastatic breast cancer specifically are living longer than ever before. As a result, the community is growing and becoming more diverse. The face of metastatic cancer is no longer limited to one age group, one stage of life, or one experience.
But public perception has been slower to catch up.
When younger people are missing from ads, awareness campaigns, and public conversations, it reinforces the idea that metastatic cancer is mostly a disease of older adults. This makes it harder for people to understand why a woman in her thirties might be sitting in an infusion chair every three weeks. It also makes it harder for employers, friends, family, and even strangers to see that metastatic cancer can affect people who look healthy, who are still working, and who are still building their futures.
Representation alone won’t solve the challenges facing the metastatic community. It won’t fund research or cure cancer. But it does matter because it shapes how people understand this disease and those living with it.
The truth is, metastatic cancer doesn’t have just one face. It looks like the grandmother spending time with her grandchildren. It looks like the father coaching his son’s baseball team. It looks like the young woman sitting across from her oncologist, trying to understand how a terminal diagnosis became part of her life before she had the chance to become a mother.
It looks like all of us.
And the sooner people begin to see that, the sooner they may begin to understand what living with metastatic cancer actually looks like.
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