On runny noses, new friends, and gallows humor.

This week on Why Alli Has Cancer: organized crime, environmental toxins, chicken cancer, the Chesapeake Bay, and a topless conversation with my plastic surgeon while she inflated my fake boob with saline.

Round five of chemo. A piece about mindset, mental health, finding a “why,” cold plunges, cancer rituals, the language we use to survive, and how sometimes you never know what you’re training for.

Healthcare Bullshit returns for another episode.

This week:
My insurance provider announced they’re leaving the Virginia Marketplace while I’m still in active cancer treatment, my colorectal surgeon abruptly stopped practicing, and I had to learn—again—how much of surviving cancer is also surviving the American healthcare system.

Also featuring:
my incredible care team,
a very good social worker,
an emotional collapse,

and Chat GPTreminding me I do not, in fact, need to solve 2027 today.

I used to know how to find the answer.

Then somewhere along the way, I stopped knowing what I wanted.

This is a story about driving, houses, and what happens when you don’t know what you want—but keep going anyway.

On day one of chemo, I was handed a hazmat kit to take home.

Literally.

This episode walks through what it means to be trained to clean up chemotherapy spills—on clothes, on floors, on your own skin—while slowly realizing where that same poison is actually going.

Back half. Chemo Part One.

Things are getting harder—physically, mentally, all of it. This episode is about uncertainty, the grind, and trying to plan a life when you have no idea how you’ll feel from one day to the next.

Also: a potential escape window—and a care team that understands quality of life matters, too.

Two unexpected questions from my oncologist—about acne medication and long-distance running—send me down a research rabbit hole. This episode explores potential risk factors for colorectal cancer in younger, healthy populations—and why “too young” and “too fit” might not mean what we think.

Eight firefighters. One paramedic. And me, saying “I’m fine.” This is the story of the night my body said otherwise—and the beginning of learning how to let people help.

Chemo, labs, food, movement, and a mountain escape. No big breakthroughs—just steady progress and the work of doing everything possible to rebuild before the next knockdown.