What we're doing...
This is a publication about cancer. Written by people who have been through it, for people going through it and the people who love them.
It is not a hospital pamphlet. It is not a wellness brand. It is not a newsletter about "thriving." (If you need to thrive today, that is a lot of pressure, and I don't know what to tell you.) It is a place for honest, personal, occasionally funny writing about what a cancer diagnosis actually does to a life. The parts nobody tells you. The parts your doctor doesn't have time for. The parts your friends will love you for never bringing up at dinner.
What you'll find here
- Essays about diagnosis, treatment, and the long, weird tail of survivorship
- Writing about the parts of the healthcare system that don't work, and the parts that surprise you
- Thinking out loud about design, technology, and why the tools built for patients are mostly terrible
- Founder notes from building Fancer.health, a navigation service for newly diagnosed patients and their caregivers
- The occasional piece that has nothing to do with cancer, because cancer is not a personality
Who's writing
David Beach. Two-time Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer survivor. Nine years cancer-free. Over 65 cycles of chemotherapy behind me. I spent the years after treatment informally guiding newly diagnosed patients through their first disorienting weeks, because I remembered how lost I was. Fancer.health is that work, built to scale. This publication is where the writing lives.
Other voices show up here too. Survivors, caregivers, clinicians, advocates who have something real to say and no interest in softening it.
What this isn't
Not medical advice. Not a support group. Not a substitute for your oncologist.
If you or someone you love just got a diagnosis and you need practical help, a roadmap, plain-English translations of your lab results, a guide for your caregiver, that is what Fancer.health is for.
This is the writing. That is the work.
Subscribe
Free to read. Paid is patronage. It keeps the work going and the app free for patients, always.
Because F cancer.