At 27, my life changed over night.

I was halfway through a night shift as a paramedic when my entire world changed.

During a quiet moment, I opened my health portal to check the results of my MRI.

I was alone.

As I read through the report, my eyes landed on words I never imagined I would see.

I remember staring at my phone, reading the report over and over again, hoping I had misunderstood what I was looking at. As a paramedic and a third-year nursing student, I understood enough to know it wasn’t just another test result.

It wasn’t just describing what the doctors had found. It was describing the exact future I was terrified of.

I just turned 27 years old two day prior.

There was no doctor sitting beside me.

No one to explain what it meant.

No one to answer the hundreds of questions racing through my mind.

Just silence.

I somehow finished my shift.

Then I waited.

For the next two and a half weeks, I carried the weight of that MRI report before I finally received a phone call from my doctor. Every day felt endless. I searched for answers, replayed every possible outcome in my mind, and tried to prepare myself for a future I never imagined I would have to face.

When my doctor finally called, my biggest fear was confirmed.

“Nevena you have stage 3 colorectal cancer.”

One sentence divided my life into a “before” and an “after.”

Just days earlier, my biggest worries had been passing exams, preparing for clinical placements, picking up my next ambulance shift, and getting one step closer to becoming the nurse I had always dreamed of being. I loved being a paramedic. I loved showing up for people on the hardest days of their lives. Caring for others wasn’t just my career—it had truly become apart of who I was.

In what felt like an instant, those dreams were replaced with chemotherapy schedules, oncology appointments, surgery consultations, fertility preservation and conversations about survival.

Before I even had time to process my diagnosis, I was told there was another decision that couldn’t wait.

I had to make one of the biggest decisions of my life. Within days, I was giving myself hormone injections, traveling for fertility preservation, and undergoing egg retrieval—not because I was ready to have children, but because cancer had forced me to ask questions I never imagined asking myself at 27. I wasn’t trying to start a family. I was fighting to preserve the chance that I might one day have one.

Almost immediately afterward, I began chemotherapy.

At just 27 years old, I entered chemical menopause.

No one prepares you for grieving a future that hasn’t happened yet.

While so many of my friends are planning weddings, buying homes, building careers, announcing pregnancies, and starting families, I’ve been learning how to live with chemotherapy, uncertainty, and the fear that cancer may have changed the future I always imagined and wanted for myself.

Every two weeks, I return for treatment, hoping the medications destroying the cancer leave enough of me behind to rebuild my life when this is over.

Some days, the exhaustion is so overwhelming that getting out of bed feels like climbing a mountain.

Some days, I catch myself looking at my paramedic uniform hanging in the closet and wonder when I’ll get to wear it again.

I miss caring for patients.

I miss nursing school.

I miss the person I was before cancer.

Cancer didn’t just happen to me.

It happened to my family too.

I’ve watched my parents try to be strong while quietly carrying a fear no parent should ever have to carry. They’ve sat beside me through appointments and chemotherapy, celebrated every small victory, and loved me through the hardest days of my life. Watching the people you love hurt because they can’t take your pain away is a heartbreak all its own.

One of the hardest things cancer has taken from me is my independence.

I’ve always been the person who showed up.

The one people called.

The one who wanted to help.

Writing these words is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because asking for help has never come naturally to me.

But cancer has taught me that sometimes strength isn’t carrying every burden alone.

Sometimes strength is allowing others to help carry it with you.

Because treatment has forced me to step away from both the career I love and the education I’ve worked so hard for, my income has stopped while the costs of cancer continue to grow. Between fertility preservation, treatment-related travel, medications, and everyday living expenses, the financial burden has become overwhelming.

If you’re able to donate, you’ll be helping me focus on healing instead of worrying about how to carry the financial weight of this journey.

If you’re unable to donate, simply sharing my story means more than you could ever know.

I’m fighting for more than my life.

I’m fighting to put my paramedic uniform back on.

I’m fighting to walk across the stage and become the nurse I’ve dreamed of being.

I’m fighting to hear the words, “You’re cancer-free.”

I’m fighting for the chance to become a mother.

Most of all, I’m fighting for the future I thought I had so much more time to build.

I spent my career responding to other people’s emergencies.

I never imagined mine would begin with a notification on my phone.

Thank you for reading my story.

Thank you for believing in my future.

And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping me fight for it.