‘Cancer has taken so much … but it’s also given us a few things’: One family’s journey

Activelifezero.com – EDITOR’S NOTE: This collection of personal essays was developed in collaboration with the Global Health Reporting Center, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Sabina McMahon was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer, when she was 12 years old. After chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to remove the affected leg bone, she was cancer-free for more than a year, but the cancer ultimately spread to her lungs, the first of five relapses.

Especially when it happens to younger patients, cancer affects the whole family. Sabina’s father, mother and younger brother, Charlie, who live in Portland, Oregon, have struggled to maintain a semblance of normal life even as they travel across the country seeking the best care for Sabina. Late this spring, she enrolled in a clinical trial in Cleveland but had to drop out almost immediately in order to undergo chemotherapy to shrink aggressive tumors in her lungs.

Now 17, Sabina is currently being treated at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where her family has moved to be with her. Sabina’s health struggles have not stopped her from enjoying life as a high school student – she’s preparing for her senior year – or from a budding career as a singer-songwriter who just completed her first full-length album. She has also become a public advocate for the importance of pediatric cancer research, which currently receives just 4 cents of every dollar in federal research spending and is often overlooked by drug companies.

Sabina and her family share their story here. Their stories have been edited for length and clarity. When a 12-year-old girl is diagnosed with cancer, no one would blame her if she ran screaming and crying out of the doctor’s office.

I sure as hell wanted to … but I didn’t. Instead, I sat up straight, swallowed and listened as my doctor pulled the rug out from under my perfect childhood. I had to stay calm and listen because you don’t walk out on the plan to save your life.

So you sit there and listen as they tell you about the poison they’ll be injecting into your body. You hold back a deep groan when they show you the heavy metal prosthetic knee they’ll eventually insert into your leg after they cut you open to remove the tumor. You watch through blurry eyes as the life you knew gets ripped from your hands and tossed into a caution bag because you’re no longer safe from the evils of the world.

You do all of this … because there is no other choice. Now, I’m not going to sit here and recount all the details of my treatment because – if I’m being completely honest – I have very little recollection of my treatment. Those in the “cancer club” call it ChemoBrain.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that my lack of memory could be a result of medical post-traumatic stress disorder – or MPTSD – and is simply my body trying to protect me from reliving the grueling experience. Of course I remember the big things: going in for the resection surgery that would remove the tumor from my right knee and replace it with a titanium rod; strapping my beeping IV pole to the back of a trike and zooming circles around the children’s cancer ward in hopes of sweating out some of the medicine; the look on my parents’ faces and the sweet ring of the bell when I finished treatment. I remember the really high highs as well as the really low lows, and for reasons beyond my understanding, I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything.

It must have been autumn, because the road to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland was dark and slick with fallen maple leaves. Fifteen minutes earlier, Sean and I had texted each other “let’s go,” and we both started driving in opposite directions. He was coming home from the chemo ward to be with Charlie, and I was heading in to be with Sabina.

Back in 2021, we lived only 6 miles from the hospital, just long enough to play three or four songs on the car stereo … turned up loud. These were early days in Sabina’s cancer journey, our horrific new normal. Almost five years later, my moments of weakness devastate me, grind me to a halt and render me a puddle of tears and snot.

That version of me is something I keep hidden inside the confines of my car. I choose to let it out alone because I do it better that way. When I feel a wave of fear and sadness come on, I get in the car and start driving with music turned up.

My go-to sad jams are “Forever Young” by Alphaville, “Before I Walk on Fire” by Sophie B. Hawkins, “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” by Taylor Swift — and this year, “Ain’t Kansas Anymore” by Sabina Clare. I lean into the lyrics, feel the feels and ugly cry.

I snarl and scream at the universe for letting cancer happen to Sabina. I grieve for the other parents I know who’ve already crossed to the other side of their child’s passing. I allow myself to picture life on Earth without Sabina walking it with me, and the notion of it sinks me into thorny darkness.

The anger, the fear, the hatred of cancer. I shout demands at God; I make deals: If you save her, she will save you. I offer myself in sacrifice, then take it back because of what it would do to Charlie and Sean to lose me.

Then I feel guilty for making that choice. I imagine our life as it was before cancer – and how these last five years could have been so much better for Sabina and my whole family. I rage at the unfairness and cruelty of it all.

I feel robbed of the life I wanted for my family and myself. Oddly enough, what pulls me back into the light is thinking about women who came before me like, my grandmother and Eliza Hamilton (yes, that Eliza). Both women endured war, the loss of parents, the loss of children, the loss of their husbands.

Can you imagine? How can a person live with so much pain and sorrow? And yet they carried their grief for decades and lived well into their 90s – albeit five generations and world paradigms apart.

I think: If they can carry on, so can I. People from the past – whether we knew them or not – show us that while we might never move on from tragic loss, we have to keep on going. I see the strength of others, like Eliza and my grandmother, and their examples of keep going help me find my own strength to do so.

When we see how people are able to transfigure suffering into strength, it’s a glimpse of the spiritual alchemy we are all capable of. To those out there wondering if you’d be strong enough to endure your child’s battle with cancer: Yes. You have the strength.

… I just hope you never have a reason to find out how strong you can actually be. I arrive at the hospital and walk into Sabina’s room displaying the confidence of a sea captain heading into a storm. I’ll never forget the feeling I felt when I heard my own song professionally recorded for the first time.

I was staying in an Airbnb in Seattle when my producer, Justin, sent me the first cut of my debut single, “Cinematic.” I was scheduled for surgery the next morning to remove one of my relapse nodules, but at that moment, all that mattered was my music. I sat and listened, squealing as the first few bars played. Then the whole song.

Up until that point, all of my recordings were just me and my guitar, so hearing the drums and the extra vocals blew my mind. I was making the 5-year-old Taylor Swift-wannabe version of me proud, that she would’ve gotten up on the coffee table and danced her little booty off, and that’s all I could’ve asked for. Music has been a part of my life for longer than I can remember.

When I was 3 years old, my cousin asked me for a performance so I climbed onto our grandparents’ theater’s stage and sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at the top of my lungs. Ever since, I’ve been entertaining (or annoying) my parents by singing showtunes around the house, and I’ve been writing songs since I was 10. Every little girl has a phase where she wants to be the next big pop star, and I guess I never grew out of that phase.

So naturally, when I was diagnosed, I turned to music. I wrote about friendships that slipped while I was away from school, and the ones that stayed by my side. I wrote in moments of deep sadness, raging at cancer and what it did to my life, through a melody and a chord progression.

I have songs about the friends I’ve lost to cancer in the same notebook as the ones about my highschool sweetheart. I started working with my producer, Justin Chase, my sophomore year of high school. I had missed a few months of school due to complications with my cancer medication, so I had plenty of time to work on my music.

I released my first song, “Cinematic,” on September 13, 2025, exactly four years after my initial diagnosis. Our family relocated to Ohio this summer so I could pursue treatment and surgery here. Relocating posed challenges when it comes to making music professionally, but I’ve been determined not to let it slip.

This past June, I went into a studio here in Columbus to record the final vocals of my debut album, “forget me not,” and send them back to Justin in time for the album’s release on August 21. I joke that I go through withdrawals when I don’t have access to my guitar or a piano. I truly don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have music to turn to.

Throughout my journey with cancer, however, it’s become less about my own ambitions and more about inspiring any little kid listening to my music from their hospital bed with a chemo drip running. I know how much I needed that when I was little, so I hope I can be that for someone else. My parents had a whole life before cancer showed up.

My sister was a teenager. They had a life before cancer destroyed it. But I was a little kid.

It’s just how I grew up. I’ve never really had a life beyond cancer. So when people ask about my life before cancer, I tell them I can’t remember much.

It’s all a blur. And to many people, that sounds like a bad thing. But it’s normal to me.

It’s just how I grew up. It’s been a huge part of my life for the past five years – the years that I grew up the most. But I learned to live with the roughness.

When Sabina was diagnosed, I was 9 years old, in third grade. I thought cancer was like a bad sickness. When my sister was on chemotherapy that first time, Covid was still running rampant, so the hospital only allowed two visitors at a time.

The farthest I got was the lobby. Never went into the room my family spent so much time in. I would only see my sister every two weeks, or even longer.

My parents kept me away from the horrible things she had to go through. Now, I’m almost 14, and I’ve learned how to live with the constant medical travels and the weeks upon weeks of time away from my family. I’m writing this at my home in Portland, while my dad and sister are 2,500 miles away in Ohio.

Yeah, I hate it. Yeah, it sucks. But if she wasn’t there, getting the best possible care, maybe I’d be telling a different story, one where she isn’t alive.

That thought is worse than any distance. Of course I get sad. Who wouldn’t?

I have good days, great days, bad days and days I wish I could forget. But I’ve learned to enjoy the times I’m with my family. I keep going for my sister, for my family and for everyone else that I love and care about.

Because past all the sickness and sadness, you have to keep going. You have to suck it up and deal with it. I have a wonderful memory of a trip I made with Sabina to Chicago not long ago.

It was an unseasonably warm spring evening, and we decided to eat dinner at a restaurant on the riverwalk. As we sat and talked for hours, about Sabina’s dreams, I couldn’t help but think how lucky I was to get that time with my daughter. I was also very aware there was no way we’d be there without cancer.

Strange as it may sound, not ALL the memories associated with Sabina’s cancer journey are bad. After she was diagnosed at age 12, we spent the next nine months living part-time in a hospital room. Over that time, we enjoyed the deep and meaningful conversations that “roommates” often have.

When you realize cancer is trying to take your child’s life, you stop saving your best stories until “later in life.” So right about the time many tweenage daughters decide their dad is oh-so-uncool, Sabina and I became closer … because of cancer. Our family has certainly spent the past five years living by the popular YOLO mantra: You only live once. When your daughter might not have much longer to live, you adjust your mentality about going on adventures.

We’ve taken incredible family trips to New York City and Hawaii, but it’s the simple moments that I cherish most dearly. On the way back from Chicago, on the Amtrak, Sabina and I got the chance to eat dinner in the dining car as the sun was setting over Glacier National Park. Enjoying that dinner with my daughter as we stared in awe at the spectacular view was incredible.

It never would have happened without cancer. So, yeah: Cancer sucks. Obviously, I would happily trade all these fond memories like the ones above for Sabina to have never been diagnosed.

But she was. And if all I did was focus on the bad moments and the horrible unfairness of it all, I would go insane. Cancer has taken so much from my family, but it’s also given us a few things, too.

The other night, I was up late crying because I felt like I was back to square one. As if by starting chemo again, I’ve started over. I remember looking forward to my senior year as a milestone representing five years cancer-free, and now that that’s not my reality.

I was feeling as though I let my 12-year-old self down. In that moment, all I wanted was to hug that younger version of me and tell her that I’m sorry she’s still going through this. But then I realized, I have lived so much life between her timeline and mine.

I’ve visited beautiful countries, met incredible people and made memories of events that she could only dream of. I realized that if I could take my 12-year-old self out for coffee, I’d want to tell her about those experiences, not the sadness I felt for an hour the other night. If I could sit down with the freshly diagnosed me, I’d tell her I know it’s scary, and no, she didn’t do anything to deserve it.

I’d tell her it’s going to hurt when some of her friends bail, but she shouldn’t blame them too much because they’re just 12, too. I’d be honest and say that she’s going to have days where she feels lonely from not being at school but that there are so many people who love her and are rooting for her. I’d tell her that I know she feels sick and that surgery is going to be really hard, but it’ll all be worth it when she hears the ringing sound of the bell on May 13, 2022.

I’d tell her that yes, she’ll have awkward hair phases when it’s growing back, but she’ll style it fashionably. I’d blow her mind by telling her about all of the events she’ll speak at, sharing her story to raise awareness and funding for childhood cancer research. I’d tell her about all the amazing people who have come into her life.

I’d tell her I know she dreams of having a boyfriend, but that doesn’t mean she should dim her light for that one guy, because he won’t be good to her in the end, and she deserves better because she beat damn cancer! I’d tell her that the next boy will be the love of her life. In fact, she already knows him.

I’d tell her to have faith in herself when it comes to performing, because she’ll land the lead role in her high school musical her freshman year that will give her some of the best friends she could ask for. I’d tell her that there will be really high highs and really low lows, and days where all she’ll want to do is give up but that she must keep going. I’d tell her that she’s so strong, knowing that she’s heard it a thousand times before.

But this time, I’d remind her of what Bob Marley said, that “you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.” Before I get up from our little coffee date, she’ll stop me and ask one last question: “Will we be OK?” But she shouldn’t know the answer. She needs the hope of “yes” to get her through the days of pain and sickness to come, but she also needs the fear of “no” to drive her to sign on for the treatments that she doesn’t want to do, after she relapses. I’ll simply smile before turning and walking back into my place in her future, because yes, sweet girl, we will be OK.