April 21, 2025 • 43 mins
Is there really such thing as being a ‘BAD SURVIVOR?’ Teenage cancer survivor and filmmaker Alex Dvorak says yes!
From being a chemo kid to dealing with survivor’s guilt, Alex takes us through the health rollercoaster that inspired her comedy ‘Bad Survivor' which has become a film festival favorite! To learn more about the movie, and to find screenings in your area, visit BadSurvivor.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is let's be clear with Shannon Doherty. Hi, let's
be clear, listeners. I'm honored to be here. I'm Alex Devorak.
I'm a writer, director, a model, an executive producer of
the film Bad Survivor. Today, I'll be talking about my
experience being a cancer patient as a young person. I
(00:23):
was nineteen when I got treatment, and there's so much
to dive into here, into the unique experience of what
us adolescents and young adults go through when we're diagnosed.
So I want to talk about the aftermath of omission
and how I turned pain into art. I'll be discussing
my modeling career and my writing projects, which include graphic novels, films,
(00:45):
TV series and op eds that all center around Team
Rebellion with dark, humor and heart. So I'd love to
start today by talking about my connection to Shannon Doherty,
of course, the reason why we're all here listening and
tuning into her podcast. I never met Shannon in person,
(01:05):
but her legacy has touched my life as I'm sure
it has touched all of yours. Growing up especially, I
was a big fan of the movie Heathers. That movie,
in so many ways informed my writing and my desire
to show on screen and in all the mediums that
I write for insanely strong, unapologetic female characters who maybe
(01:27):
subvert our normal expectations of what we're used to seeing
women do on screen. And I feel like in real life,
Shannon had such a knack for speaking uncomfortable truths, and
that's something I've always felt a real kinship with her on.
So when I started my writing career, I started really
by publishing essays that said everything that I was afraid
(01:49):
to say out loud to my own family and friends,
but for some reason was courageous enough to publish it
out into the world. And I wanted to write about
all the taboo topics around a cancer diagnosis as a
young person, and that's I don't know, It's really been
people like Shannon who have spoken up and spoken out
who have inspired me to do the same. And honestly,
(02:13):
I was discussing the other day with a friend of
mine what I wanted to share on this podcast, and
I just loved what she said and I wrote it down.
She said, we grew up on the OC, and our
older sisters grew up on nine O two one oh,
and it's so true, like in nine on two one oh,
of course, and it was, you know, the symbol of
like the California lifestyle. At least that's how it felt
(02:33):
growing up on the East Coast. And it shows like
nine O two one O and the OC and the
hills that really inspired me growing up on the East coast,
like move to La So. I grew up in Washington,
d C. And I was just dreaming about this Cali lifestyle.
I went to an all girls Catholic high school with uniforms.
It was very preppy. I don't know, winters were really intense.
(02:57):
It was just East Coast in all of the way.
And I would sit and watch the OC and think like,
oh my god, these kids have outdoor lockers, like they're
not concerned with rain, and they're friends with these surfer guys,
and there's palm trees, and I just thought it was
really idyllic and wonderful. And I would sit in my
childhood bedroom in high school and I would dream about
(03:20):
moving to California and that's all that I wanted and
that was truly my focus. So I worked hard in
school to get a four point o GPA to like
get into a school out of State, and I got
into my dream school, which was Loyola Marymount University LMU
in LA, right next to Lax up on the bluff,
you know, overlooking all of LA and Venice Beach and
(03:43):
the Hollywood Sign. And it was really this start of
my life. And I made my best friends the first
weekend of school I was there at you know, I
didn't know anybody. I'd been to only once in my
entire life. I was a total newbie, and I really,
for the first time in my life, I felt like, Oh,
this is where I'm supposed to be this these are
my people. I knew I wanted to be in entertainment
(04:05):
in some fashion, though I had no clue in what
capacity yet, and I couldn't wait to explore that and
figure out where is my place in life? And this
was where all my energy lie. I was like, Oh,
in La. It was really the start of my my independence,
my growing up. And that's, of course sometimes when life
(04:26):
likes to throw you a curveball, as it does. So's
the beginning of my sophomore year. And I went home
to DC for Thanksgiving break and my mom the day
before Thanksgiving, she was like, well, I'm going to take
you to the pediatrician. You've been sick for a few months.
Let's figure out what's going on. And so I'm waiting
(04:49):
the pediatrician's office with my mom and the doctor said
something like, you know, I can give you antiotics or
you can get a chest X ray. And I said, no, no, no,
I need a chest And I'm not sure why I
said that. I don't think i'd ever gotten a chest
X right before. But I had been given antibiotics in
my school in LA and nothing was working. And I
(05:10):
think I was just sort of like, I just kind
of get to the root of it. I don't know
what the deal is, Like, I don't want to be
sent home with pills and come back next week. And
so they sent me down the hole to get sex ray,
got it done. They gave me the results in this
big Manila envelope that I'll never forget. And I walk
back into the reception area and my mom and I
are sitting there for hours, for hours, and there's toddlers,
(05:34):
you know, sneezing and being sick and their parents all
stressed out, and one by one, all these kids get
seen and leave and seen and leave, and it was
just at one point, just my mom and I and
the secretaries start packing up to leave, and the nurses
start packing up to leave, and I was like, this
is odd. So I being nosy as I take a
(05:56):
peek at the what's in the envelope? And I consider
myself an intelligent, capable woman, but looking at the sheet
of paper, I had no idea what was on it.
It was it literally looked like a sheet of paper
that had just one long word on it, you know,
like entire paragraph of text. But I remember seeing one
word and it's had like lymphocite something. And I turned
(06:19):
my mom and I was like, Mom, what's lymphoma? And
she said, oh, it's it's a type of cancer. And
I was like, oh, I've never I didn't know that,
like I've never heard that before. And that was it,
and I put it back in the envelope and my
mom when I started talking about Thanksgiving dinner. My mom's
from Puerto Rico, so we do a big Puerto Rican
Thanksgiving meal with like a roast pig and rice and beans.
(06:41):
And we had spent the entire day my pedatrician's office,
so nothing was prepared, and so we were just talking
about you know, we had to like pick up carrots
on the way home or something like. We were just
kind of going through the usual day to day routine
as if I hadn't just seen this result. I suppose
none of that had sunk into either one of us.
(07:02):
And I remember turning to my right to grab like
a tissue and turning back and my mom had like
scurried away into the doctor's office and the door had closed,
So now I'm staying alone in like a half dark
reception area. I just remember thinking like this can't be good,
Like I don't this doesn't feel right. And then my
(07:27):
mom came out like five minutes later, with like red
puffy eyes, and she sat down next to me and
just like stared straight ahead like no one. She wasn't
looking at me, which would be the start of many
people not making eye contact when needing to tell me
bad news turned out. But she was staring straight ahead
and she said, you have themphoma And I was like, no, no,
(07:50):
because like you said that was cancer, and she was
like yeah. And then I don't think I cried. I
don't think we said anything. We just sort of sat
and that thing happened in the movies where you start
to see your life flash forward, and I saw, you know,
(08:11):
the graduation I was never going to have, and the
marriage and the kids, and the career and the success
that I always wanted, and all those things I was
never going to get because I was going to die
at nineteen. And so I don't know. We just sat there,
and the doctor eventually came out, and this amazing, really
(08:31):
kind man told me that his son had had the
exact same hodgkins am foma, and he had always wished
that the doctor had allowed him to tell his son,
and he wanted to give me that, and he did
look me in the eye and he did tell me,
this will be terrifying, and you will live. And he
was like, go straight to the hospital, like don't go home.
(08:52):
Don't you can't go anywhere else, go home, or excuse me,
go well to your new home to the hospital, and
of course I didn't listen. I went. I wanted to
shower and eat food and process, and then we went
and he was right. I was in the hospital for
a very long time after that, and that's how I
was diagnosed. So I went to Children's hospital, as he
(09:14):
advised me to. Again, this was my pediatrician. I was nineteen,
and you know, when you're a teenager, you may very
well feel independent and like an adult in so many ways,
and like you know everything about everything, but you're a kid,
and also in so many ways. You know, maybe I
was allowed to vote, but I you know, I don't know.
I wasn't paying rent, I wasn't an adult. I was
an adult, but all of a sudden was being faced
(09:36):
with a very adult diagnosis and needed to make a
lot of adult decisions. So I was treated in a
children's hospital here in Washington, DC, and I was treated
alongside toddlers and little kids, and then there was me
as a teenager. It's a very strange experience being the
(09:59):
only teen because these kids are you know, they really
inspired me in a lot of ways. They were always
in the coloring room and hooked up to their chemo,
and their parents, you know, of course, right by their side,
and but they're smiling and they want to play and
they are very much still kids, which I thought was
(10:19):
always really cool. But as a teen, you know, unfortunately
or fortunately, I'm not sure I very much understand what's happening,
what's going on to your body, and what your odds
really are and that can be a very difficult burden.
(10:40):
And so I was admitted into the ICU and started
surgeries and chemo full time. My chemo schedule was Monday
through Friday, like at nine am to six pm sort
of deal. And I remember my first nurse. He was
amazing Sean. I will never forget him. He was just
like amazing gay man that is immediately bonded with and
(11:02):
and I see you. I was his only patient that
was awake and conscious. So I think he just was
really chatty and wanted to talk with me all night
and I loved that about him. And I remember him
closing my blinds one day and saying, oh, you know,
It's like he's like, oh, where do you go to school?
I was like, oh, LM you you know, and I
light lit up talking about La and my life in La.
And he's like, oh, it's a shame you're gonna have
(11:22):
to drop out of school. And I was like, oh,
I'm but I'm not. What do you I'm never going
to drop out of me Like this is no And
he was like oh, okay, you know. And I think
he gave me the time I needed to process. But
I will never forget that moment because I was like, oh,
I'm I'm not going back to my life. Actually this
(11:43):
this is my my life, and you have to understand.
This happened over the course of several hours. So life
can can throw you curveballs, but I don't know. I've
always felt like the sooner, you know, the sooner you're
able to accept. I'm a planner, So the sooner I'm
able to accept and learn as much as I can,
(12:05):
then I can make a plan and move forward even
if it's difficult for me. Like education and understanding. You know,
I was given like a cancer binder, and I studied
it every day like a total weirdo. That it really
gave me a lot of reassurance in some way to
understand what was happening inside my body, even if it
was horrific. And so, you know, the tumor that was
(12:29):
in my chest that showed in that original X ray
was large and weighing on my heart and lungs. They
weren't able to operate on it, but luckily the chemo
really shrunk it fairly quickly. Actually, I mean, of course
it doesn't feel that way in treatment, but in hindsight,
treatment did work. It was effective for me, thankfully, And
(12:57):
you know, there is something I wanted to touch on here,
which was and I don't know if this is everyone's
experience in treatment or a lot of people's experience it,
or is it just sort of this teenage age that
I was, But I found that many times I wasn't
spoken to directly right. So for instance, like my care
(13:19):
team would be speaking to my parents out in the
hallway about something that was about to happen to my body,
or you know, surgery I ought to go into, or
procedure or what the next step was. And I found
that very odd because it was happening to me, and
I was you know, I'm a teenager, but you you're
your own person enough at that point. And I really
(13:42):
worked hard, though I for sure lost this at some
point in treatment, but I did work very hard in
the beginning of treatment to advocate for myself and speak up,
and I did in an odd way. Sometimes I have
to tell people to look me in the eye and
like give it to me straight. Often sometimes I would
have a doctor that would have to do that. When
(14:02):
my parents left, like there were certain things they wanted
to tell me, not in front of them. It was
just a really I was always kind of navigating this
experience of wanting to be taken seriously, wanting to be
taken seriously as an adult though being in a children's hospital,
and they're obviously used to treating children and in a
different way. Of course, children are going to need a
(14:22):
different level of care than teens need. And something I
just want to mention a small tangent that feels like
incredibly important, is you know, I've been working really closely
with Teen Cancer America and they're this incredibly wonderful organization
and they're really doing the real work. They're creating facilities
(14:42):
and programs within existing hospitals right now to help treat
teens and help meet their needs that right now are
not are really not being met. And teens really do
need something different than the grown adult and the elder thing.
They need something different than the youth and the kids
in treatment. It just feels really important to mention, so
(15:05):
please check out Team Cancer America. They're doing such such
wonderful things. I'm really honored to be working with them
and an advocate for them. So in my family of four,
(15:28):
as I mentioned, my mom is from Puerto Rico, my
dad is from Prague, and I have my big sister
who's one year older than me, and the four of us.
You know, of course, our families are far away and
in different places all over Europe in Puerto Rico, and
so the four of us in DC like this close
little unit. And my sister is a hypochondriac, and it
(15:52):
was very afraid to visit me in the hospital, though
she definitely conquered her fear and did it. But I
do I bring this up because I remember feeling like okay.
When I was diagnosed, I immediately felt like okay, of
the four of us, I'm this makes sense. I'm glad
it's me, Like I'm the one that can do this.
I can I can handle this, and I don't think
(16:15):
I could handle seeing any one of them go through it.
And I used my competitiveness I always grew up as
an athlete to help me through treatment in so many ways.
So for instance, I used this point system. I would
(16:37):
use this point system in my mind to survive treatment.
I would play these games with myself. So for instance,
when I was receiving radiation, I'm you know, you're laying
down in a bed and they're dropping you in and
I had a radiation mass to make sure that you know,
my neck and shoulders and head weren't moving, of course,
(16:57):
to make sure that they're radiating the right area. And
right before they're putting on the mask and things, and
they're sort of boulting you in place. The nurses come
in and they're like adjusting me, and so I would
play this point system, Like if they had to adjust
me twice, then I like lost points, so they had
to if they didn't have adjust me at all, Like
I got a certain amount of points, and I would
have this point system, and at the end of the day,
(17:18):
I would like rank in my own head. And I
never told anybody this, but I would rank all my
points to see if, like did I win. And I
know that the journeys imported not wit necessarily winning or losing,
but that's just not how my brain works. Like I
love to win things. I loved to score goals and
winning helps me and I like competing with myself and
(17:41):
so I did a point system with just about anything
and everything, and it helped me get through treatment. And
I have written a young adult graphic novel about called
Chemo Kids, and it's about a girl a teen girl,
Dave All, who is being treated at a children's hospital,
(18:02):
and the kids that night come alive with this fantasy
world and they teach her how to play games, mind
games that win her points and it helps her cope
with her daytime. Like, it's just something I find fascinating now,
the mind games I played to survive, because it's something
I don't think I was necessarily aware of. I think
in the moment, I thought, I am so painfully bored
(18:25):
that I have now created this odd fantasy life. But
looking back now as an adult and realizing, wow, that
was really that took a lot of ingenuity Like that,
that's fascinating to me what the mind can do to
get you through something really dark, you know, finding something
(18:47):
light and playful. And I've always been a person that like,
I need a finish line, and of course with something
like cancer, there's not always you know, you don't really
you know it's going to come out to hour by hour,
day by day, or month by month. So I needed
to sort of set this finish line at the end
of each day to show something for myself, you know,
(19:11):
to really continue. And you know, the day that I
was told I was cancer free, it was interesting. I
was twenty and my doctors pulled me into this room.
I knew every single inch of my hospital wing, of course,
(19:32):
and they brought me into this room I'd never seen before.
It was like a door that felt like it just appeared,
and they brought me in and it was like a
computer room, and I had all these wires and they
sat me and my parents down and we were in
these office chairs with the wheels on them. And you
have to understand at this point, I'm on so much medication,
(19:52):
and you know, I very much felt like there was
chemo my system though I was just finishing chemo and
moving onto radiation, and you know, sleeping pills and anti
nausea meds and anti anxiety meds and morphine and just
so much going on in my body. And I'm staring
at these wires for some reason, and maybe I'm a
(20:13):
little OCD and needed I don't know. I was just like,
what is this? It didn't I just really did not
know what they were to tell me. And they brought
up on one of the screens my scans, and I
had sort of an obsession with scans. It really felt
like something real and tangible that I could see and
like measure progress. And so they opened up a scan,
(20:37):
which I thought looked really cool, and I'm trying to
figure out what's on it, and the doctor showed me
that my tumor had shrunk into such an extent that
it was dead and now considered scar tissue, and the
cancer that was on the other parts of my lymph
nodes were all gone and it hadn't spread to my
bone marrow, and I was now are free. And my
(21:03):
parents were in tears and hugging me and kissing me
and so joyful and relieved that their daughter was going
to be okay. And I just sat there staring at
the chords, and I had no idea what to say,
and I felt my doctor staring at me, sort of
(21:24):
waiting for something. And I will never forget one of
my doctors saying, this is the part where you're supposed
to be happy, and I wasn't happy, and I didn't
believe them. I don't know if that's odd to say,
but I was like, you know, someone's telling me you're healthy,
(21:47):
but this is not. This is not healthy, Like I
know healthy that I'm not. I feel terrible. I look,
you know what I mean? I look very much ill,
and I remember just sort of arguing actually a little bit,
and being like, but if I'm cancer free, why am
I going into tradation? And you know, I'd had friends
(22:07):
who had cancer and it came back, and so I
just wasn't trusting, and I certainly didn't feel happy. I
felt very confused and a bit ashamed that I wasn't happy,
and a bit ashamed that I wasn't maybe throwing the
parade or thinking them as I probably should have been
or could have been, but I wasn't. I wasn't feeling
(22:30):
those emotions. And I hope that anyone listening who has
felt that way before can release some of that shame
and know that you're not alone if you don't immediately
feel what others are expecting you to feel, and it's okay,
It's okay, right of course, Now looking back, I can
(22:53):
say I was in the midst of intense trauma, and
it is okay that I wasn't smiling or laughing or
didn't feel relieved yet you know, like that's that actually
kind of tracks that makes sense. And I sort of
felt like the relief in the celebration was for my
family to feel not me because I kind of felt like, welly,
(23:14):
I still have this burden, you know, I kind of
still felt like I still have all this to go
through and to I was still in the midst. And
you know, I don't think I realized I was going
to live until after radiation. And I went home home
(23:35):
for real home, like to my childhood home. And I
had never really been left alone for so many months, right,
Like you have your care team and your doctors and
your nurses, and you're always being poked and prodded, and
you know, my parents like watching me like a hawk.
And I was never alone, and like truly not even
(23:58):
to go to the bathroom. And and I was in
my kitchen and I was left alone for a few minutes,
and we always cook family dinner, and my mom had
asked me to like make this salad. And I was
cutting into this tomato, and I just started crying. And
I felt like I felt like I had I I
(24:19):
was supposed to die or something, and here I was
cutting this tomato and I was still alive enough to
like cut this beautiful, perfect tomato that came out of
the earth. And I just felt this insane moment of
relief and gratitude for this tomato. And I guess how interesting,
(24:43):
right that maybe that was the reaction someone had wanted
me to have months prior, and now it was truly
hitting me. And who knows, maybe it was all the
morphine that had finally wore off and now emotions could
come to the surface. I don't know, but I just
remember this beautifully perfect tomato for the rest of my life.
I will forever remember this tomato. And you know, I
(25:07):
think it's important to speak a bit about remission. I
think there's a moment in time where our community is
able to rest easy and you know, kind of check
the box of she's okay, you know, and sort of
like the castroles stop coming to the door, and care
packages kind of stopped in the letters, and you know,
(25:28):
and it's quiet, and now you're home and may very
well be, you know, addicted to the meds you've been
on for so long, and your doctors will sort of like,
see you in three months, and you're like, what, I
see you every second every day, like we're in this
for life. I truly remember feeling like my doctors broke
up with me the day they told me I was
(25:48):
cancer free, and that is why I made the film
Bad Survivor, which is in film festivals right now, and
it's really about the feeling of being a terrible survivor.
I am always, in my mind for some reason, told myself, wow,
I'm not pretty bad survivor, you know. And I grew
(26:13):
up watching the movie A Walk to Remember, not just
watching like idolight, being obsessed with the movie I Walk
to Remember, and still I think it's like beautiful and iconic,
but being obsessed with it prior to getting cancer as
a teenager and then getting cancer as a teenager is
wild because I really truly thought, well, when I'm bald,
you know, like the hottest guy in school is going
(26:34):
to fall in love with me, and I'll, you know,
just like gently pass on with like long braided hair
after like our summer of love. And that is not
whatsoever what happened. You know, Like little kids would scream
and run the other way when they saw me on
the street because they were scared of my bald head.
And certainly no one fell in love with me. And
(26:56):
I was definitely not an inspiration, and I you know, wasn't.
I wasn't raising millions of dollars for cancer research. I
wasn't talking about my experience. I wasn't brave, though everyone
called me that. I was a total top mess. I
was processing survivor's guilt in so many ways. I had
(27:19):
so many people around me die of cancer, and I
was like the last one standing, and that concept didn't
make sense to me, because like, why that doesn't That
does not make sense to me. So my friend Jocelyn
was like my cancer mentor or like very godmother or something.
(27:43):
Though she would hate for me to say that, but
she grew up in the house next to me, and
she was just a few years older than me when
she got cancer, and she had been in remission, it
had come back, had been remission, it had come back.
And when I got cancer, I was very isolated and
home alone and in my bom and wouldn't really let
(28:03):
visitors in the house and would just told me, you know,
at one point when I was incredibly sick, and you know,
just like a shut door kind of energy, And if
Josson showed up, I was like, oh my god, yes,
go go yeah, bring her and her please bring her in.
And she was the only person I would talk to
and the only person I would listen to and you know,
she taught me what mouthwashed to use, because you know,
(28:23):
this chemo med's going to give you mouth sores. And
someone had brought flowers and she's like, no, no, you can't
have these flowers because of this allergy. And she just
knew all the things I didn't know, Like, no one
taught me how to have cancer. I didn't know I
did what I was doing. I didn't know how to
do this. And there are certain things that your doctors
tell you, and there's a lot of things that they don't,
and you kind of learned the hard way how to
(28:44):
get used to this cancer life. And thank God for
Jocelyn because she just taught me so much. And she
was the only person I felt like I could be
in the same room with and like my shoulders could
kind of relax and I wasn't being judged. I could
just be me despite being cancer me, now, you know,
(29:04):
because cancer me sort of seemed to trigger a lot
of people, but not Jocelyn, like it could just it
was okay to be me when things were really dark
(29:25):
in treatment, she I was on the couch, I kind
of you know, I couldn't get up from the couch
for a long time, and she uh came over to
me as I was laying down, and she was like, okay,
this is good that you have the TV on. Just
you know, have something on that's funny. It doesn't matter
if you laugh whatever, just let it play. It's going
to help pass time and take up space. And she
was like, see the clock under the TV. You need
(29:47):
to live in ten minute increments. You're thinking too far ahead.
You need if you convince yourself that it's ten ten
am right now, okay, And if you get to ten
twenty am, that means you live. And then when it
hits it twenty you will make it to ten thirty.
If you make it to ten thirty, you will live.
And so for a while I was living in ten
(30:07):
minute increments. And when they said you're gonna live a
long life, my doctor said to me, I did not
know how to process that. And I thought, that's crazy
that I live in ten minute increments. What do you
mean you want me to live to ninety plus if
(30:29):
this is life? I don't think I can do ninety plus,
you know. And so I at some point started to
get good scans back and back and back, and I thought,
oh no, why maybe I am going to live a
long life, and you know, everyone else has passed away,
and I have to figure out why I'm still here,
(30:53):
or maybe not why if that's something even you can
figure out, but how to make the most of this,
Like I can't sit in wallow at the old life
that I no longer have and lost, you know, and
the friendships lost and the school and the new life lost.
Like I'm going to have to accept where I am
(31:16):
today and move forward with some type of new self
if truly I'm gonna have a long life, Like I've
got to figure this out. And so really like accepting
and rebuilding for me looked like attempting to gain some
type of control back. So there was a time where
(31:38):
you would walk in I would walk into a Barnes
and Noble and that whole self help section where they
have the shelves, they have the table of it all
dayed out. I had read every single book in self
help section more than once, mind you, And I was
actually a little annoyed at one point because I was like,
we need to publish some new you know, I'm devouring these.
(31:58):
I need more, I need to learn everything. And I
really became a student of finding people often successful people
because they were easier to find to research. I wanted
to find people who had been through traumas worse than mine.
My dad always taught me, like, never feel sorry for yourself.
You there's always someone worse off. There's always someone going
(32:21):
through something, something worse, which is absolutely always true for me.
That's how I feel. And so, you know how I
wanted to learn how someone else had gone through something
worse than me and transformed their life like. I wanted
to learn how was someone joyful after trauma and not
just joyful, but like full Like how did someone rebuild
(32:45):
their life, how did they re enter society, how did
they have a full like? How are they successful? How
did they go after what they wanted? How did they
pursue their dreams again? When at the time I was
afraid to walk outside. I thought a piano would fall
and hit me in the head. I really was scared
of life, very very scared, and I had this goal
(33:09):
of you know, I wanted no one. I wanted people
to see me, to meet me, someone brand new. I
wanted to walk into a room and I wanted someone
to meet me and have no idea I had ever
been through trauma Like that was my goal was to
be such a light in the room that someone saying, oh,
(33:30):
she's probably had such like an easy life and a
perfect child, like that still makes me smile. I honestly
think that is like the best compliment ever. And then
I wanted to have sort of like this like the
secret in the back of my mind just for me
to be like I've been to Helen back, but no
one has to know that I really felt during treatment.
(33:50):
If I walked into a room, I was sort of
this like darkness on not knowing, never on purpose, without
having said saying a word. I was sort of like
reminding people of death. And I lowered the energy of
the room and people got really shifty and wanted to leave.
And if I set a scent, if I even mentioned
the word, can't you know forget it? Like so, I
(34:12):
wanted the opposite. I wanted the opposite. I wanted to
be a literal ray of sunshine and be bigger than life.
And I would study people like Audrey Hepburn because I
would watch her movies all night. I was in insomniac,
I couldn't sleep, so I'd spent all night watching Audrey
hepburn movies, and she seemed so like she floated on screen,
(34:33):
and she was light and airy, and no one knew
all this trauma. She had been through war and had
a really difficult childhood, and people see this starlet on camera,
and I just thought, she brings me joy when I
watch her. And I wanted people to feel that way
when they met me, or watched me in some way,
(34:53):
or read my writing or and so I was finding
all these tools to take little bits and pieces of
what had worked for other people. So I started to
see a ton of healers, because it's not just obviously,
you know, celebrities and well known people who have something
(35:14):
to offer us, though they may write, but it is
truly anyone I met. I wanted to learn what worked
for them in life, like why were they happy? How
did they get too happy? Like how does one do
this right? And so, for instance, I went to get
a massage, and this messuse was just like she actually
(35:38):
changed my life in so many ways. I saw her
for a long time, and I told her once I
shared with her before session, I was like, you know,
everyone keeps telling me everything's going to be okay, Everything's
going to be okay, and God has a plan for
you and everything's gonna be okay. And I kept thinking, like, no,
it's not. How do you know everything's gonna be okay?
Like why are you telling me it's gonna be okay?
I kind of found it difficult, and she said to me, well,
(36:03):
maybe everything could be okay, you know, like maybe it could,
And just that one sentence kind of changed my life.
I was like, okay, like let me allow some room
for could. And I just found these little bits and
pieces from healers and friends and celebrities and anyone I
could to start changing my mindset, and I was able
(36:26):
to really start to rebuild my life. It's crazy to say.
I transferred to a school in DC and I graduated
while doing all of this studying on my own about
like life and joy, and I moved to New York.
I got an internship at seventeen magazine, which was like
my dream to be in the fashion closet of seventeen magazine.
(36:48):
And one day I was watching this model. We were
styling a model for an editorial photoshoot, and of course
I'm behind the camera, She's in front of the camera,
and she was really in charge of her body and
like taking ownership and so beautiful and wonderful and moving
just like just in full confidence. And I just remember thinking,
(37:10):
like I want to do that, I want to feel that.
And that was the start of my modeling career. I
got signed in New York and I Milan in LA
and I started to travel the world to get paid
to model, and was the this was what I always wanted,
(37:34):
right like this life where no one knew what I
had been through, and I was starting to really fulfill it,
right like I was on the runways and like quite
literally having just come from you know, a scan, and
I was keeping in a secret and I wasn't telling anyone,
and I wanted to define myself by something other than
(37:55):
my cancer diagnosis. And that worked for a while for
several years. It felt empowering until I realized, I'm covering
up my port scar, I'm maybe covering up the old me,
and that I don't I felt this sense of like
I don't deserve that, Like let me let me reintegrate
(38:17):
both sides of my life, my cancer journey and this
new fresh life in Manhattan that I was having. And
so I started to write and I started to pour
this into an essay for the Huffington Post that I published,
which was really like my coming out with the truth story,
and I was able to share with my agents at
(38:41):
the time, my new friends in Manhattan. No one knew
I was a cancer survivor and what I was going through,
as you know, through these many years in remission, and
it was incredibly, incredibly liberating. And I highly suggest to
anyone listening to find ways to pour your trauma and
(39:02):
what you've been through, if possible, into art. That can
be anything, painting, writing, and you don't have to share
it with anyone. I chose to at one point because
that felt empowering for me, but you don't have to.
It can be in a diary, but allow yourself to
tell yourself your own narrative. And for me, this full
full circle moment of turning my pain into art is
(39:24):
my film Bad Survivor. It's this story about a girl
broken up with by her doctors who has to come
home to her multicultural family, just like I did, and
put the pieces of her life back together. And what
was most satisfying about this film is well, in a
odd way, playing the main character. You know, I wrote it,
(39:47):
directed it, and started it, and this main character gets
to turn to camera and say all the sassy, naughty
things that she never got to say in real life,
and it is an incredibly therapeutic, really funny moment. It's
really bringing dark humor to a day that was actually
(40:08):
probably had no humor for me in real life, you know,
but I'm able to bring back to it all of
the hilarious things that I was actually thinking in my head,
all those mind games that I used to play. And
one thing I want to touch on, which I find
really important and interesting, is that screening Bad Survivor at
film festivals now getting a sense of are people able
(40:32):
to find the humor in a cancer story? Right? I
think we're used to seeing the sort of over romanticized
young people's version of cancer stories where they fall in love,
and then maybe the really melodramatic sort of adult versions,
And this is that in between that teen story, right,
Like that angsty teenager who's going through all the same things,
who probably just wants to lose her virginity and make
(40:55):
it through finals, but she has all of these intense
life and death decisions to make at the same time.
And in film festivals, I'm finding that In the first punchline,
the audience is a little like, are we okay? Is
it okay to laugh at this? And by the second
and the third one, they're realizing that the main character
is laughing at herself. It is okay to laugh. It
(41:15):
is Oh, just because she's bald does not mean she
doesn't have a sense of humor, and people really rest
and relax. And the biggest laugh that shocked me, honestly
was when the title Bad Survivor in huge capital letters
is just thrown on screen and there was like a
roar of laughter, and I was like, oh, wow, how
interesting people find Bad Survivor the title funny. That's just
(41:38):
something I've been calling myself all of these years. Bad
Survivor the film is truly just the start of something bigger.
It's the start of the TV series that I'm developing.
So I just want to say, you know, if anyone
out there is listening and they feel they're in treatment
or in remission, and I don't know, you may be
(42:00):
bald and weird and sarcastic, and certain friends may no
longer be around, and it might feel like no one
gets you. But I do. I do, and we do,
and there's this community of us, and I feel like
our stories really do deserve to be told. Thank you
so much for tuning in today. It's been an absolute
(42:23):
treat to get to share the same airwaves as Shannon's
already and her legacy absolutely lives on, and I so
appreciate you all for listening. If anyone is interested in
watching my short film and learning more about it, Bad Survivor,
please feel free to check out Bad Survivor dot com
to see when we'll be screening in a city near you,
(42:44):
and to follow me and see all the latest on
all my projects. You can go to Alexdoborak dot com
or go ahead and follow me on Instagram. My handle
is at It's Alex Devorek and of course if you
google my name, all of these will come up, so
no worries. I'm easy to find. If this podcast resonated
with you in any way, I'd love to hear from you.
Please feel free to reach out. I love you all.
(43:07):
Thank you,
This is let's be clear with Shannon Doherty. Hi, let's
be clear, listeners. I'm honored to be here. I'm Alex Devorak.
I'm a writer, director, a model, an executive producer of
the film Bad Survivor. Today, I'll be talking about my
experience being a cancer patient as a young person. I
(00:23):
was nineteen when I got treatment, and there's so much
to dive into here, into the unique experience of what
us adolescents and young adults go through when we're diagnosed.
So I want to talk about the aftermath of omission
and how I turned pain into art. I'll be discussing
my modeling career and my writing projects, which include graphic novels, films,
(00:45):
TV series and op eds that all center around Team
Rebellion with dark, humor and heart. So I'd love to
start today by talking about my connection to Shannon Doherty,
of course, the reason why we're all here listening and
tuning into her podcast. I never met Shannon in person,
(01:05):
but her legacy has touched my life as I'm sure
it has touched all of yours. Growing up especially, I
was a big fan of the movie Heathers. That movie,
in so many ways informed my writing and my desire
to show on screen and in all the mediums that
I write for insanely strong, unapologetic female characters who maybe
(01:27):
subvert our normal expectations of what we're used to seeing
women do on screen. And I feel like in real life,
Shannon had such a knack for speaking uncomfortable truths, and
that's something I've always felt a real kinship with her on.
So when I started my writing career, I started really
by publishing essays that said everything that I was afraid
(01:49):
to say out loud to my own family and friends,
but for some reason was courageous enough to publish it
out into the world. And I wanted to write about
all the taboo topics around a cancer diagnosis as a
young person, and that's I don't know, It's really been
people like Shannon who have spoken up and spoken out
who have inspired me to do the same. And honestly,
(02:13):
I was discussing the other day with a friend of
mine what I wanted to share on this podcast, and
I just loved what she said and I wrote it down.
She said, we grew up on the OC, and our
older sisters grew up on nine O two one oh,
and it's so true, like in nine on two one oh,
of course, and it was, you know, the symbol of
like the California lifestyle. At least that's how it felt
(02:33):
growing up on the East Coast. And it shows like
nine O two one O and the OC and the
hills that really inspired me growing up on the East coast,
like move to La So. I grew up in Washington,
d C. And I was just dreaming about this Cali lifestyle.
I went to an all girls Catholic high school with uniforms.
It was very preppy. I don't know, winters were really intense.
(02:57):
It was just East Coast in all of the way.
And I would sit and watch the OC and think like,
oh my god, these kids have outdoor lockers, like they're
not concerned with rain, and they're friends with these surfer guys,
and there's palm trees, and I just thought it was
really idyllic and wonderful. And I would sit in my
childhood bedroom in high school and I would dream about
(03:20):
moving to California and that's all that I wanted and
that was truly my focus. So I worked hard in
school to get a four point o GPA to like
get into a school out of State, and I got
into my dream school, which was Loyola Marymount University LMU
in LA, right next to Lax up on the bluff,
you know, overlooking all of LA and Venice Beach and
(03:43):
the Hollywood Sign. And it was really this start of
my life. And I made my best friends the first
weekend of school I was there at you know, I
didn't know anybody. I'd been to only once in my
entire life. I was a total newbie, and I really,
for the first time in my life, I felt like, Oh,
this is where I'm supposed to be this these are
my people. I knew I wanted to be in entertainment
(04:05):
in some fashion, though I had no clue in what
capacity yet, and I couldn't wait to explore that and
figure out where is my place in life? And this
was where all my energy lie. I was like, Oh,
in La. It was really the start of my my independence,
my growing up. And that's, of course sometimes when life
(04:26):
likes to throw you a curveball, as it does. So's
the beginning of my sophomore year. And I went home
to DC for Thanksgiving break and my mom the day
before Thanksgiving, she was like, well, I'm going to take
you to the pediatrician. You've been sick for a few months.
Let's figure out what's going on. And so I'm waiting
(04:49):
the pediatrician's office with my mom and the doctor said
something like, you know, I can give you antiotics or
you can get a chest X ray. And I said, no, no, no,
I need a chest And I'm not sure why I
said that. I don't think i'd ever gotten a chest
X right before. But I had been given antibiotics in
my school in LA and nothing was working. And I
(05:10):
think I was just sort of like, I just kind
of get to the root of it. I don't know
what the deal is, Like, I don't want to be
sent home with pills and come back next week. And
so they sent me down the hole to get sex ray,
got it done. They gave me the results in this
big Manila envelope that I'll never forget. And I walk
back into the reception area and my mom and I
are sitting there for hours, for hours, and there's toddlers,
(05:34):
you know, sneezing and being sick and their parents all
stressed out, and one by one, all these kids get
seen and leave and seen and leave, and it was
just at one point, just my mom and I and
the secretaries start packing up to leave, and the nurses
start packing up to leave, and I was like, this
is odd. So I being nosy as I take a
(05:56):
peek at the what's in the envelope? And I consider
myself an intelligent, capable woman, but looking at the sheet
of paper, I had no idea what was on it.
It was it literally looked like a sheet of paper
that had just one long word on it, you know,
like entire paragraph of text. But I remember seeing one
word and it's had like lymphocite something. And I turned
(06:19):
my mom and I was like, Mom, what's lymphoma? And
she said, oh, it's it's a type of cancer. And
I was like, oh, I've never I didn't know that,
like I've never heard that before. And that was it,
and I put it back in the envelope and my
mom when I started talking about Thanksgiving dinner. My mom's
from Puerto Rico, so we do a big Puerto Rican
Thanksgiving meal with like a roast pig and rice and beans.
(06:41):
And we had spent the entire day my pedatrician's office,
so nothing was prepared, and so we were just talking
about you know, we had to like pick up carrots
on the way home or something like. We were just
kind of going through the usual day to day routine
as if I hadn't just seen this result. I suppose
none of that had sunk into either one of us.
(07:02):
And I remember turning to my right to grab like
a tissue and turning back and my mom had like
scurried away into the doctor's office and the door had closed,
So now I'm staying alone in like a half dark
reception area. I just remember thinking like this can't be good,
Like I don't this doesn't feel right. And then my
(07:27):
mom came out like five minutes later, with like red
puffy eyes, and she sat down next to me and
just like stared straight ahead like no one. She wasn't
looking at me, which would be the start of many
people not making eye contact when needing to tell me
bad news turned out. But she was staring straight ahead
and she said, you have themphoma And I was like, no, no,
(07:50):
because like you said that was cancer, and she was
like yeah. And then I don't think I cried. I
don't think we said anything. We just sort of sat
and that thing happened in the movies where you start
to see your life flash forward, and I saw, you know,
(08:11):
the graduation I was never going to have, and the
marriage and the kids, and the career and the success
that I always wanted, and all those things I was
never going to get because I was going to die
at nineteen. And so I don't know. We just sat there,
and the doctor eventually came out, and this amazing, really
(08:31):
kind man told me that his son had had the
exact same hodgkins am foma, and he had always wished
that the doctor had allowed him to tell his son,
and he wanted to give me that, and he did
look me in the eye and he did tell me,
this will be terrifying, and you will live. And he
was like, go straight to the hospital, like don't go home.
(08:52):
Don't you can't go anywhere else, go home, or excuse me,
go well to your new home to the hospital, and
of course I didn't listen. I went. I wanted to
shower and eat food and process, and then we went
and he was right. I was in the hospital for
a very long time after that, and that's how I
was diagnosed. So I went to Children's hospital, as he
(09:14):
advised me to. Again, this was my pediatrician. I was nineteen,
and you know, when you're a teenager, you may very
well feel independent and like an adult in so many ways,
and like you know everything about everything, but you're a kid,
and also in so many ways. You know, maybe I
was allowed to vote, but I you know, I don't know.
I wasn't paying rent, I wasn't an adult. I was
an adult, but all of a sudden was being faced
(09:36):
with a very adult diagnosis and needed to make a
lot of adult decisions. So I was treated in a
children's hospital here in Washington, DC, and I was treated
alongside toddlers and little kids, and then there was me
as a teenager. It's a very strange experience being the
(09:59):
only teen because these kids are you know, they really
inspired me in a lot of ways. They were always
in the coloring room and hooked up to their chemo,
and their parents, you know, of course, right by their side,
and but they're smiling and they want to play and
they are very much still kids, which I thought was
(10:19):
always really cool. But as a teen, you know, unfortunately
or fortunately, I'm not sure I very much understand what's happening,
what's going on to your body, and what your odds
really are and that can be a very difficult burden.
(10:40):
And so I was admitted into the ICU and started
surgeries and chemo full time. My chemo schedule was Monday
through Friday, like at nine am to six pm sort
of deal. And I remember my first nurse. He was
amazing Sean. I will never forget him. He was just
like amazing gay man that is immediately bonded with and
(11:02):
and I see you. I was his only patient that
was awake and conscious. So I think he just was
really chatty and wanted to talk with me all night
and I loved that about him. And I remember him
closing my blinds one day and saying, oh, you know,
It's like he's like, oh, where do you go to school?
I was like, oh, LM you you know, and I
light lit up talking about La and my life in La.
And he's like, oh, it's a shame you're gonna have
(11:22):
to drop out of school. And I was like, oh,
I'm but I'm not. What do you I'm never going
to drop out of me Like this is no And
he was like oh, okay, you know. And I think
he gave me the time I needed to process. But
I will never forget that moment because I was like, oh,
I'm I'm not going back to my life. Actually this
(11:43):
this is my my life, and you have to understand.
This happened over the course of several hours. So life
can can throw you curveballs, but I don't know. I've
always felt like the sooner, you know, the sooner you're
able to accept. I'm a planner, So the sooner I'm
able to accept and learn as much as I can,
(12:05):
then I can make a plan and move forward even
if it's difficult for me. Like education and understanding. You know,
I was given like a cancer binder, and I studied
it every day like a total weirdo. That it really
gave me a lot of reassurance in some way to
understand what was happening inside my body, even if it
was horrific. And so, you know, the tumor that was
(12:29):
in my chest that showed in that original X ray
was large and weighing on my heart and lungs. They
weren't able to operate on it, but luckily the chemo
really shrunk it fairly quickly. Actually, I mean, of course
it doesn't feel that way in treatment, but in hindsight,
treatment did work. It was effective for me, thankfully, And
(12:57):
you know, there is something I wanted to touch on here,
which was and I don't know if this is everyone's
experience in treatment or a lot of people's experience it,
or is it just sort of this teenage age that
I was, But I found that many times I wasn't
spoken to directly right. So for instance, like my care
(13:19):
team would be speaking to my parents out in the
hallway about something that was about to happen to my body,
or you know, surgery I ought to go into, or
procedure or what the next step was. And I found
that very odd because it was happening to me, and
I was you know, I'm a teenager, but you you're
your own person enough at that point. And I really
(13:42):
worked hard, though I for sure lost this at some
point in treatment, but I did work very hard in
the beginning of treatment to advocate for myself and speak up,
and I did in an odd way. Sometimes I have
to tell people to look me in the eye and
like give it to me straight. Often sometimes I would
have a doctor that would have to do that. When
(14:02):
my parents left, like there were certain things they wanted
to tell me, not in front of them. It was
just a really I was always kind of navigating this
experience of wanting to be taken seriously, wanting to be
taken seriously as an adult though being in a children's hospital,
and they're obviously used to treating children and in a
different way. Of course, children are going to need a
(14:22):
different level of care than teens need. And something I
just want to mention a small tangent that feels like
incredibly important, is you know, I've been working really closely
with Teen Cancer America and they're this incredibly wonderful organization
and they're really doing the real work. They're creating facilities
(14:42):
and programs within existing hospitals right now to help treat
teens and help meet their needs that right now are
not are really not being met. And teens really do
need something different than the grown adult and the elder thing.
They need something different than the youth and the kids
in treatment. It just feels really important to mention, so
(15:05):
please check out Team Cancer America. They're doing such such
wonderful things. I'm really honored to be working with them
and an advocate for them. So in my family of four,
(15:28):
as I mentioned, my mom is from Puerto Rico, my
dad is from Prague, and I have my big sister
who's one year older than me, and the four of us.
You know, of course, our families are far away and
in different places all over Europe in Puerto Rico, and
so the four of us in DC like this close
little unit. And my sister is a hypochondriac, and it
(15:52):
was very afraid to visit me in the hospital, though
she definitely conquered her fear and did it. But I
do I bring this up because I remember feeling like okay.
When I was diagnosed, I immediately felt like okay, of
the four of us, I'm this makes sense. I'm glad
it's me, Like I'm the one that can do this.
I can I can handle this, and I don't think
(16:15):
I could handle seeing any one of them go through it.
And I used my competitiveness I always grew up as
an athlete to help me through treatment in so many ways.
So for instance, I used this point system. I would
(16:37):
use this point system in my mind to survive treatment.
I would play these games with myself. So for instance,
when I was receiving radiation, I'm you know, you're laying
down in a bed and they're dropping you in and
I had a radiation mass to make sure that you know,
my neck and shoulders and head weren't moving, of course,
(16:57):
to make sure that they're radiating the right area. And
right before they're putting on the mask and things, and
they're sort of boulting you in place. The nurses come
in and they're like adjusting me, and so I would
play this point system, Like if they had to adjust
me twice, then I like lost points, so they had
to if they didn't have adjust me at all, Like
I got a certain amount of points, and I would
have this point system, and at the end of the day,
(17:18):
I would like rank in my own head. And I
never told anybody this, but I would rank all my
points to see if, like did I win. And I
know that the journeys imported not wit necessarily winning or losing,
but that's just not how my brain works. Like I
love to win things. I loved to score goals and
winning helps me and I like competing with myself and
(17:41):
so I did a point system with just about anything
and everything, and it helped me get through treatment. And
I have written a young adult graphic novel about called
Chemo Kids, and it's about a girl a teen girl,
Dave All, who is being treated at a children's hospital,
(18:02):
and the kids that night come alive with this fantasy
world and they teach her how to play games, mind
games that win her points and it helps her cope
with her daytime. Like, it's just something I find fascinating now,
the mind games I played to survive, because it's something
I don't think I was necessarily aware of. I think
in the moment, I thought, I am so painfully bored
(18:25):
that I have now created this odd fantasy life. But
looking back now as an adult and realizing, wow, that
was really that took a lot of ingenuity Like that,
that's fascinating to me what the mind can do to
get you through something really dark, you know, finding something
(18:47):
light and playful. And I've always been a person that like,
I need a finish line, and of course with something
like cancer, there's not always you know, you don't really
you know it's going to come out to hour by hour,
day by day, or month by month. So I needed
to sort of set this finish line at the end
of each day to show something for myself, you know,
(19:11):
to really continue. And you know, the day that I
was told I was cancer free, it was interesting. I
was twenty and my doctors pulled me into this room.
I knew every single inch of my hospital wing, of course,
(19:32):
and they brought me into this room I'd never seen before.
It was like a door that felt like it just appeared,
and they brought me in and it was like a
computer room, and I had all these wires and they
sat me and my parents down and we were in
these office chairs with the wheels on them. And you
have to understand at this point, I'm on so much medication,
(19:52):
and you know, I very much felt like there was
chemo my system though I was just finishing chemo and
moving onto radiation, and you know, sleeping pills and anti
nausea meds and anti anxiety meds and morphine and just
so much going on in my body. And I'm staring
at these wires for some reason, and maybe I'm a
(20:13):
little OCD and needed I don't know. I was just like,
what is this? It didn't I just really did not
know what they were to tell me. And they brought
up on one of the screens my scans, and I
had sort of an obsession with scans. It really felt
like something real and tangible that I could see and
like measure progress. And so they opened up a scan,
(20:37):
which I thought looked really cool, and I'm trying to
figure out what's on it, and the doctor showed me
that my tumor had shrunk into such an extent that
it was dead and now considered scar tissue, and the
cancer that was on the other parts of my lymph
nodes were all gone and it hadn't spread to my
bone marrow, and I was now are free. And my
(21:03):
parents were in tears and hugging me and kissing me
and so joyful and relieved that their daughter was going
to be okay. And I just sat there staring at
the chords, and I had no idea what to say,
and I felt my doctor staring at me, sort of
(21:24):
waiting for something. And I will never forget one of
my doctors saying, this is the part where you're supposed
to be happy, and I wasn't happy, and I didn't
believe them. I don't know if that's odd to say,
but I was like, you know, someone's telling me you're healthy,
(21:47):
but this is not. This is not healthy, Like I
know healthy that I'm not. I feel terrible. I look,
you know what I mean? I look very much ill,
and I remember just sort of arguing actually a little bit,
and being like, but if I'm cancer free, why am
I going into tradation? And you know, I'd had friends
(22:07):
who had cancer and it came back, and so I
just wasn't trusting, and I certainly didn't feel happy. I
felt very confused and a bit ashamed that I wasn't happy,
and a bit ashamed that I wasn't maybe throwing the
parade or thinking them as I probably should have been
or could have been, but I wasn't. I wasn't feeling
(22:30):
those emotions. And I hope that anyone listening who has
felt that way before can release some of that shame
and know that you're not alone if you don't immediately
feel what others are expecting you to feel, and it's okay,
It's okay, right of course, Now looking back, I can
(22:53):
say I was in the midst of intense trauma, and
it is okay that I wasn't smiling or laughing or
didn't feel relieved yet you know, like that's that actually
kind of tracks that makes sense. And I sort of
felt like the relief in the celebration was for my
family to feel not me because I kind of felt like, welly,
(23:14):
I still have this burden, you know, I kind of
still felt like I still have all this to go
through and to I was still in the midst. And
you know, I don't think I realized I was going
to live until after radiation. And I went home home
(23:35):
for real home, like to my childhood home. And I
had never really been left alone for so many months, right,
Like you have your care team and your doctors and
your nurses, and you're always being poked and prodded, and
you know, my parents like watching me like a hawk.
And I was never alone, and like truly not even
(23:58):
to go to the bathroom. And and I was in
my kitchen and I was left alone for a few minutes,
and we always cook family dinner, and my mom had
asked me to like make this salad. And I was
cutting into this tomato, and I just started crying. And
I felt like I felt like I had I I
(24:19):
was supposed to die or something, and here I was
cutting this tomato and I was still alive enough to
like cut this beautiful, perfect tomato that came out of
the earth. And I just felt this insane moment of
relief and gratitude for this tomato. And I guess how interesting,
(24:43):
right that maybe that was the reaction someone had wanted
me to have months prior, and now it was truly
hitting me. And who knows, maybe it was all the
morphine that had finally wore off and now emotions could
come to the surface. I don't know, but I just
remember this beautifully perfect tomato for the rest of my life.
I will forever remember this tomato. And you know, I
(25:07):
think it's important to speak a bit about remission. I
think there's a moment in time where our community is
able to rest easy and you know, kind of check
the box of she's okay, you know, and sort of
like the castroles stop coming to the door, and care
packages kind of stopped in the letters, and you know,
(25:28):
and it's quiet, and now you're home and may very
well be, you know, addicted to the meds you've been
on for so long, and your doctors will sort of like,
see you in three months, and you're like, what, I
see you every second every day, like we're in this
for life. I truly remember feeling like my doctors broke
up with me the day they told me I was
(25:48):
cancer free, and that is why I made the film
Bad Survivor, which is in film festivals right now, and
it's really about the feeling of being a terrible survivor.
I am always, in my mind for some reason, told myself, wow,
I'm not pretty bad survivor, you know. And I grew
(26:13):
up watching the movie A Walk to Remember, not just
watching like idolight, being obsessed with the movie I Walk
to Remember, and still I think it's like beautiful and iconic,
but being obsessed with it prior to getting cancer as
a teenager and then getting cancer as a teenager is
wild because I really truly thought, well, when I'm bald,
you know, like the hottest guy in school is going
(26:34):
to fall in love with me, and I'll, you know,
just like gently pass on with like long braided hair
after like our summer of love. And that is not
whatsoever what happened. You know, Like little kids would scream
and run the other way when they saw me on
the street because they were scared of my bald head.
And certainly no one fell in love with me. And
(26:56):
I was definitely not an inspiration, and I you know, wasn't.
I wasn't raising millions of dollars for cancer research. I
wasn't talking about my experience. I wasn't brave, though everyone
called me that. I was a total top mess. I
was processing survivor's guilt in so many ways. I had
(27:19):
so many people around me die of cancer, and I
was like the last one standing, and that concept didn't
make sense to me, because like, why that doesn't That
does not make sense to me. So my friend Jocelyn
was like my cancer mentor or like very godmother or something.
(27:43):
Though she would hate for me to say that, but
she grew up in the house next to me, and
she was just a few years older than me when
she got cancer, and she had been in remission, it
had come back, had been remission, it had come back.
And when I got cancer, I was very isolated and
home alone and in my bom and wouldn't really let
(28:03):
visitors in the house and would just told me, you know,
at one point when I was incredibly sick, and you know,
just like a shut door kind of energy, And if
Josson showed up, I was like, oh my god, yes,
go go yeah, bring her and her please bring her in.
And she was the only person I would talk to
and the only person I would listen to and you know,
she taught me what mouthwashed to use, because you know,
(28:23):
this chemo med's going to give you mouth sores. And
someone had brought flowers and she's like, no, no, you can't
have these flowers because of this allergy. And she just
knew all the things I didn't know, Like, no one
taught me how to have cancer. I didn't know I
did what I was doing. I didn't know how to
do this. And there are certain things that your doctors
tell you, and there's a lot of things that they don't,
and you kind of learned the hard way how to
(28:44):
get used to this cancer life. And thank God for
Jocelyn because she just taught me so much. And she
was the only person I felt like I could be
in the same room with and like my shoulders could
kind of relax and I wasn't being judged. I could
just be me despite being cancer me, now, you know,
(29:04):
because cancer me sort of seemed to trigger a lot
of people, but not Jocelyn, like it could just it
was okay to be me when things were really dark
(29:25):
in treatment, she I was on the couch, I kind
of you know, I couldn't get up from the couch
for a long time, and she uh came over to
me as I was laying down, and she was like, okay,
this is good that you have the TV on. Just
you know, have something on that's funny. It doesn't matter
if you laugh whatever, just let it play. It's going
to help pass time and take up space. And she
was like, see the clock under the TV. You need
(29:47):
to live in ten minute increments. You're thinking too far ahead.
You need if you convince yourself that it's ten ten
am right now, okay, And if you get to ten
twenty am, that means you live. And then when it
hits it twenty you will make it to ten thirty.
If you make it to ten thirty, you will live.
And so for a while I was living in ten
(30:07):
minute increments. And when they said you're gonna live a
long life, my doctor said to me, I did not
know how to process that. And I thought, that's crazy
that I live in ten minute increments. What do you
mean you want me to live to ninety plus if
(30:29):
this is life? I don't think I can do ninety plus,
you know. And so I at some point started to
get good scans back and back and back, and I thought,
oh no, why maybe I am going to live a
long life, and you know, everyone else has passed away,
and I have to figure out why I'm still here,
(30:53):
or maybe not why if that's something even you can
figure out, but how to make the most of this,
Like I can't sit in wallow at the old life
that I no longer have and lost, you know, and
the friendships lost and the school and the new life lost.
Like I'm going to have to accept where I am
(31:16):
today and move forward with some type of new self
if truly I'm gonna have a long life, Like I've
got to figure this out. And so really like accepting
and rebuilding for me looked like attempting to gain some
type of control back. So there was a time where
(31:38):
you would walk in I would walk into a Barnes
and Noble and that whole self help section where they
have the shelves, they have the table of it all
dayed out. I had read every single book in self
help section more than once, mind you, And I was
actually a little annoyed at one point because I was like,
we need to publish some new you know, I'm devouring these.
(31:58):
I need more, I need to learn everything. And I
really became a student of finding people often successful people
because they were easier to find to research. I wanted
to find people who had been through traumas worse than mine.
My dad always taught me, like, never feel sorry for yourself.
You there's always someone worse off. There's always someone going
(32:21):
through something, something worse, which is absolutely always true for me.
That's how I feel. And so, you know how I
wanted to learn how someone else had gone through something
worse than me and transformed their life like. I wanted
to learn how was someone joyful after trauma and not
just joyful, but like full Like how did someone rebuild
(32:45):
their life, how did they re enter society, how did
they have a full like? How are they successful? How
did they go after what they wanted? How did they
pursue their dreams again? When at the time I was
afraid to walk outside. I thought a piano would fall
and hit me in the head. I really was scared
of life, very very scared, and I had this goal
(33:09):
of you know, I wanted no one. I wanted people
to see me, to meet me, someone brand new. I
wanted to walk into a room and I wanted someone
to meet me and have no idea I had ever
been through trauma Like that was my goal was to
be such a light in the room that someone saying, oh,
(33:30):
she's probably had such like an easy life and a
perfect child, like that still makes me smile. I honestly
think that is like the best compliment ever. And then
I wanted to have sort of like this like the
secret in the back of my mind just for me
to be like I've been to Helen back, but no
one has to know that I really felt during treatment.
(33:50):
If I walked into a room, I was sort of
this like darkness on not knowing, never on purpose, without
having said saying a word. I was sort of like
reminding people of death. And I lowered the energy of
the room and people got really shifty and wanted to leave.
And if I set a scent, if I even mentioned
the word, can't you know forget it? Like so, I
(34:12):
wanted the opposite. I wanted the opposite. I wanted to
be a literal ray of sunshine and be bigger than life.
And I would study people like Audrey Hepburn because I
would watch her movies all night. I was in insomniac,
I couldn't sleep, so I'd spent all night watching Audrey
hepburn movies, and she seemed so like she floated on screen,
(34:33):
and she was light and airy, and no one knew
all this trauma. She had been through war and had
a really difficult childhood, and people see this starlet on camera,
and I just thought, she brings me joy when I
watch her. And I wanted people to feel that way
when they met me, or watched me in some way,
(34:53):
or read my writing or and so I was finding
all these tools to take little bits and pieces of
what had worked for other people. So I started to
see a ton of healers, because it's not just obviously,
you know, celebrities and well known people who have something
(35:14):
to offer us, though they may write, but it is
truly anyone I met. I wanted to learn what worked
for them in life, like why were they happy? How
did they get too happy? Like how does one do
this right? And so, for instance, I went to get
a massage, and this messuse was just like she actually
(35:38):
changed my life in so many ways. I saw her
for a long time, and I told her once I
shared with her before session, I was like, you know,
everyone keeps telling me everything's going to be okay, Everything's
going to be okay, and God has a plan for
you and everything's gonna be okay. And I kept thinking, like, no,
it's not. How do you know everything's gonna be okay?
Like why are you telling me it's gonna be okay?
I kind of found it difficult, and she said to me, well,
(36:03):
maybe everything could be okay, you know, like maybe it could,
And just that one sentence kind of changed my life.
I was like, okay, like let me allow some room
for could. And I just found these little bits and
pieces from healers and friends and celebrities and anyone I
could to start changing my mindset, and I was able
(36:26):
to really start to rebuild my life. It's crazy to say.
I transferred to a school in DC and I graduated
while doing all of this studying on my own about
like life and joy, and I moved to New York.
I got an internship at seventeen magazine, which was like
my dream to be in the fashion closet of seventeen magazine.
(36:48):
And one day I was watching this model. We were
styling a model for an editorial photoshoot, and of course
I'm behind the camera, She's in front of the camera,
and she was really in charge of her body and
like taking ownership and so beautiful and wonderful and moving
just like just in full confidence. And I just remember thinking,
(37:10):
like I want to do that, I want to feel that.
And that was the start of my modeling career. I
got signed in New York and I Milan in LA
and I started to travel the world to get paid
to model, and was the this was what I always wanted,
(37:34):
right like this life where no one knew what I
had been through, and I was starting to really fulfill it,
right like I was on the runways and like quite
literally having just come from you know, a scan, and
I was keeping in a secret and I wasn't telling anyone,
and I wanted to define myself by something other than
(37:55):
my cancer diagnosis. And that worked for a while for
several years. It felt empowering until I realized, I'm covering
up my port scar, I'm maybe covering up the old me,
and that I don't I felt this sense of like
I don't deserve that, Like let me let me reintegrate
(38:17):
both sides of my life, my cancer journey and this
new fresh life in Manhattan that I was having. And
so I started to write and I started to pour
this into an essay for the Huffington Post that I published,
which was really like my coming out with the truth story,
and I was able to share with my agents at
(38:41):
the time, my new friends in Manhattan. No one knew
I was a cancer survivor and what I was going through,
as you know, through these many years in remission, and
it was incredibly, incredibly liberating. And I highly suggest to
anyone listening to find ways to pour your trauma and
(39:02):
what you've been through, if possible, into art. That can
be anything, painting, writing, and you don't have to share
it with anyone. I chose to at one point because
that felt empowering for me, but you don't have to.
It can be in a diary, but allow yourself to
tell yourself your own narrative. And for me, this full
full circle moment of turning my pain into art is
(39:24):
my film Bad Survivor. It's this story about a girl
broken up with by her doctors who has to come
home to her multicultural family, just like I did, and
put the pieces of her life back together. And what
was most satisfying about this film is well, in a
odd way, playing the main character. You know, I wrote it,
(39:47):
directed it, and started it, and this main character gets
to turn to camera and say all the sassy, naughty
things that she never got to say in real life,
and it is an incredibly therapeutic, really funny moment. It's
really bringing dark humor to a day that was actually
(40:08):
probably had no humor for me in real life, you know,
but I'm able to bring back to it all of
the hilarious things that I was actually thinking in my head,
all those mind games that I used to play. And
one thing I want to touch on, which I find
really important and interesting, is that screening Bad Survivor at
film festivals now getting a sense of are people able
(40:32):
to find the humor in a cancer story? Right? I
think we're used to seeing the sort of over romanticized
young people's version of cancer stories where they fall in love,
and then maybe the really melodramatic sort of adult versions,
And this is that in between that teen story, right,
Like that angsty teenager who's going through all the same things,
who probably just wants to lose her virginity and make
(40:55):
it through finals, but she has all of these intense
life and death decisions to make at the same time.
And in film festivals, I'm finding that In the first punchline,
the audience is a little like, are we okay? Is
it okay to laugh at this? And by the second
and the third one, they're realizing that the main character
is laughing at herself. It is okay to laugh. It
(41:15):
is Oh, just because she's bald does not mean she
doesn't have a sense of humor, and people really rest
and relax. And the biggest laugh that shocked me, honestly
was when the title Bad Survivor in huge capital letters
is just thrown on screen and there was like a
roar of laughter, and I was like, oh, wow, how
interesting people find Bad Survivor the title funny. That's just
(41:38):
something I've been calling myself all of these years. Bad
Survivor the film is truly just the start of something bigger.
It's the start of the TV series that I'm developing.
So I just want to say, you know, if anyone
out there is listening and they feel they're in treatment
or in remission, and I don't know, you may be
(42:00):
bald and weird and sarcastic, and certain friends may no
longer be around, and it might feel like no one
gets you. But I do. I do, and we do,
and there's this community of us, and I feel like
our stories really do deserve to be told. Thank you
so much for tuning in today. It's been an absolute
(42:23):
treat to get to share the same airwaves as Shannon's
already and her legacy absolutely lives on, and I so
appreciate you all for listening. If anyone is interested in
watching my short film and learning more about it, Bad Survivor,
please feel free to check out Bad Survivor dot com
to see when we'll be screening in a city near you,
(42:44):
and to follow me and see all the latest on
all my projects. You can go to Alexdoborak dot com
or go ahead and follow me on Instagram. My handle
is at It's Alex Devorek and of course if you
google my name, all of these will come up, so
no worries. I'm easy to find. If this podcast resonated
with you in any way, I'd love to hear from you.
Please feel free to reach out. I love you all.
(43:07):
Thank you,
Host
Shannen Doherty
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