- I think that something that I realized
I need to work on is feeling beautiful,
regardless of how my hair looks.
It's normally the way that people point me out
or describe me, and I'm curious to know
how much of my identity,
femininity, my confidence
is really actually tied in with my hair.
But it's good to know that, even if it was all taken away,
I don't feel any less myself.
Am I okay?
Do I sound okay?
- [Man Off Camera] Looks good.
- Hi, I'm Meghan Boycoff, and on March 31st, 2018,
I was diagnosed with colon cancer.
It's kind of funny because,
the kinds of stuff that I was making for the internet
before my diagnosis revolved around
checking things off my bucket list,
or my relationship to my hair.
And then, I lost all of the hair
that I was just learning to love,
and I almost lost the life
that I was checking things off my bucket list for.
And I had to actually experience
all of these things that I had been the most afraid of.
Oh, god.
(crying and sniffling)
I don't really know why I'm shooting this,
I guess,
it felt like,
I felt like I wanted to put this feeling somewhere.
(brooding music)
It all started on a random Friday morning.
I had no previous symptoms.
I woke up and had this intense, sharp pain
attack my abdominal area.
It would come in a wave and I would brace
and hold my breath, and then it would completely disappear.
I went about my whole day like that
until around 1:00am, when my boyfriend Jake
rushes me to the ER.
I'm admitted to the hospital,
some scans are taken, and they find a blockage
in my ascending colon.
By 11:00am, I was rushed into surgery
to have eight inches of my colon
and the obstruction in there removed.
Two weeks later, after some testing had been done,
it was found that that obstruction
was a cancerous tumor.
The tumor was slow growing,
only spread to one nearby lymph node,
and I wasn't in pain at all except for that one day.
But, to ensure that nothing microscopic had escaped
and was floating around some other part of my body,
that meant chemotherapy.
I think the next six months
is just gonna be really disappointing.
Just a string of things I can't do.
(upbeat tempo music)
On the road to beginning chemotherapy,
I first had to deal with critically low iron,
a seizure-like reaction to IV iron,
fertility treatment to harvest healthy eggs
because chemo could render me
unable to produce a child naturally.
So that meant daily trips to Santa Monica,
for ultrasounds and blood work.
He loves to drive me to Santa Monica every day.
And then self-induced hormone shots,
every night for two weeks.
Yes, that is a sharps container,
that we hung on our wall,
full of all hormone shots that I took.
Hair loss due to trauma.
So much of my hair fell out in the shower.
And just reconciling with the fact that
my life was about to change
in almost every conceivable way.
This is my regular chemo attire.
Top-knot.
This big giant one piece of fabric
and Birks.
I wonder if I'm going to hate this outfit
when I'm done with chemo.
Cause of association.
(lighthearted music)
- [Woman] Okay so on three
we're going to take a deep breath.
- Okay
- Okay one, two, three deep breath.
(inhalation of breath)
Okay.
- This is the chemo room,
I got my boyfriend here with me and taking care of me.
These are all of my cords,
that are hooked up into my chest.
There it is,
little plug.
I'm just plugged in like a machine.
And I'm just waiting for those bags to empty out.
One drip at a time.
(heavy sigh)
My kitchen table is just
pills. It was a good Sunday.
I think I am ready to go back to work tomorrow.
I had stupid high expectations for myself,
I remember telling my boss at BuzzFeed,
I think I could edit from the chemo chair.
I think this was the height of my denial phase.
I was gonna go to work,
I got dressed,
just saying any of these sentences
is exhausting.
Holding my phone is exhausting.
Handing Jake my keys was exhausting.
Here's the list of side-effects that chemo had for me.
Immense fatigue,
Intense acid reflux,
nausea
This is the frustrating part about my kind of nausea, is
it's triggered by,
basically looking at anything,
and sound.
So unless I have like a sensory deprivation tank,
I'm just like triggered.
All over hair thinning
diarrhea,
constipation and nerve damage, meaning
I couldn't hold, drink, eat
or touch anything cold. I couldn't
pick up the milk carton.
I could touch it, but then if I put pressure on it
it starts to go (hiss) into my fingers.
- [Man] So you really felt the cold neuropathy this time?
- A sensitivity in my mouth
that made everything
feel like it was made of cavities.
And in my hands and feet a spontaneous,
pins and needles feeling.
Makes me nauseous, I'm sitting here so annoyed,
that I feel kind of nauseous, cause
just like the idea of chemo makes me nauseous.
(heavy sigh)
I'm really frustrated cause,
I tried going shopping with my mom.
And after walking around TJ Maxx for like
30 minutes, I'm just so tired.
I just don't feel good, I feel sick.
(crying)
I hadn't identified as a cancer survivor yet.
I didn't wanna be a cancer survivor.
I just wanted to be Meghan.
I don't wanna, like, run my fingers through my hair,
like keep pulling hair out.
A big shift in my sense of identity was coming, but
not before I beat myself up
for not being able to be who I was before.
It legitimately feels like I'm going into battle,
knowing I have chemo tomorrow.
It's just the way it's gonna be until December.
It's like a week after chemo you get your wings back,
and you feel like yourself, and you have energy,
you can eat any food, anything sounds good you know,
your uninhibited.
And then chemo comes and
your wings get totally cut off.
And then (crying) they really slow grow back.
And your like, yayy, I can fly again. (crying)
And they just get cut off, every other week.
(Sniffling)
I'm sorry, you have to deal with this.
- I think everybody's sorry you have to deal with this.
- Today I went to the fertility clinic, and they,
gave me my options, which is really just one.
To have this surgery,
To harvest my eggs, at 26. (crying)
And then,
how difficult it might be
to conceive afterwards anyway.
It's just never something that I thought,
I would need to think about, so early.
And it's so much money.
Unfortunately, as time goes on.
It's not like your body gets used to the treatments.
It's more like all of the side-effects
just continue to compound on top of each other.
So as you go on, it just gets harder
and harder to recover in between treatments.
Last week, I had the Sancuso Patch,
and I was trying out a different new anti-nausea pill.
It just absolutely sedated me.
I mean I slept for 14 hours.
And then the next day, I was not awake for longer than
an hour, I just kept falling alseep.
I felt like I was dying the next day.
And there were even a couple times that I looked at Jake
and I said am I dying?
Change was happening inside my body and therefore,
changing the way that I had to live and function.
The high standards I'd held myself to before
just couldn't be met by the new me.
Even though I have a little bit more energy today,
I guess I just can't expect to be
perfectly fine,
all of a sudden you know.
I have to work back up to it.
I normally cry
the weekend before a treatment cycle,
just cause I feel bad for myself.
But this time I'm like.
Bring it on. Let's do it.
(gentle piano music) Eventually,
I just got tired of feeling badly that I was tired.
I had to learn how to love the new version of Meghan.
I needed to set the bar somewhere I knew I could reach it,
in order to survive this.
Me being bald
is no less
me,
than this hair.
You know, like I already don't feel like me.
- Well the hair isn't you.
- I know, you know what I mean.
- I know what you mean.
- So when I felt like laying down, I laid down.
And when I felt overwhelmed, I took a freakin break.
And whenever I wanted to cry, I cried.
And then,
I took control.
(high tempo music) Fuck (girl screams)
Oh my God (girl screaming)
Jake did his best.
- I did the best.
- Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and panic,
I'm sure I will at some point.
But as of right now, I just feel relieved.
I have no hair to run my fingers through,
and worry about oh my gosh more is falling out.
And that,
feels good.
With two cycles left, I got ready,
for another massive life change.
Life without treatment.
I'd spent five months in this particular routine,
and when it was all over, that was it.
I was pretty much free to go.
So I was about to have 50% of my time
and my brain space back.
To rebuild and recreate a life. (fast pace rock music)
So I saw a nutritionist. I started working out,
to help my body bounce back faster after chemo.
And I planned a big freaking party to help celebrate
the end of one part of my life
and the beginning of another. (fast pace rock music)
I wrote this letter to myself, half-way through treatment,
not to be opened until treatment was all over.
I'm done with chemo.
And I haven't read this letter yet.
So I'm going to read it now.
August 27, 2018,
Dear Meghan, happy half-way through chemo
I'm already gonna cry.
Or by the time your reading this again.
Happy done with chemo and cancer hopefully forever.
You did
so well.
(somber music)
Life may be full of suffering,
but were it not for this experience
you would have never been able
to so deeply appreciate being alive like you do now.
You'll find yourself again.
Even if your hurt, your sick, you feel alone.
You are
alive.
It's kind of funny,
thinking about what mattered to me before.
It's so clear to me now that I made those bucket lists
of videos out of fear.
I thought it was coming from
a place of empowerment,
like grab life from the balls.
But really, it was more like you're so afraid
of having it be to late to live your life, so
go do it now. (sniffles)
I worry about much less now,
because when there's a threat
of everything being taken away,
it really highlights what you'll actually miss.
What really matters at the end of the day.
And for me, it's not my hair, or my skin,
or when I'm gonna die.
Because we have control of so little.
Cancer is more of a gift to me than I every could
have anticipated.
Now I feel like no matter how bad things get.
Alteast I'm alive
to feel anything at all.
I wouldn't change a thing.
The end.
- [Man] The end.
- [Woman] So good.
- [Man] Let's cut.
- [Woman] Cut.
(bouncy rock music)