Emily K. Perdomo's Cancer Story

Emily K. Perdomo’s Cancer Story

Meet Emily K. Perdomo: Emily is a 24-year-old Cuban American actor, photographer, and multidisciplinary artist from Miami, Florida. She is also a Stage 2 Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor. Emily believes art is something that survives, carrying memory, healing, and meaning through even the hardest seasons. She now uses it to navigate her life after cancer, making sense of what was, what is, and what’s still becoming.

How did your cancer journey begin?

I had just graduated with my BFA in Acting, standing at the edge of a life I had spent years dreaming into existence. Everything felt expansive, and full of promise. The world felt like it was finally opening its doors to me. I was working as a set dresser and prop designer at an established theatre here in Miami, and it felt like I had stepped onto the first stretch of a path that was going to be beautiful. I was truly standing at the edge of everything great I thought my life could be.

February 14th, 2025, I found a golf-ball sized lump in my neck, and within days, the beautiful world and life I knew unraveled into waiting rooms, tests, and a diagnosis I couldn’t yet comprehend. A few days later, I found myself sitting in a hospital bed on the infusion floor, receiving my first dose of chemotherapy.

Looking back, the warning signs were there. My body had been trying to tell me something was wrong for a while. I just didn’t know how to listen to it at the time. For years, it whispered through patterns I dismissed: sinus and respiratory infections that returned repeatedly, sometimes only weeks apart. A common cold that never stayed small and almost always bloomed into something heavier, harder to shake. Pneumonia, the flu, and COVID found me more often than they should have, as if my body was quietly losing a battle I couldn’t yet see. At the same time, I was shrinking, losing weight rapidly, carrying an unrelenting fatigue, my legs consumed by an itch I couldn’t explain, as if something beneath my skin was asking to be noticed.

And still, I kept going. I was enrolled in a rigorous, demanding BFA program, one that required everything from me, physically and mentally. I wore endurance like a badge of honor. I told myself this was what it meant to pursue something you love. In doing so, I learned how to override discomfort, how to silence signals, how to keep moving forward even when my body was asking me, gently at first and then louder, to stop.

I didn’t yet understand that it wasn’t weakness I was hearing, it was a warning.

Where are you now in your cancer journey?

At this point, I am nine months removed from treatment, and nine months into remission. It feels both significant and strangely intangible, like time has stretched and folded in ways I’m still trying to understand. I now live in a space of surveillance, of careful and continuous watching, routine scans, check-ins, quiet moments of anticipation before results. There is a new kind of awareness that comes with it, a heightened attentiveness to my body and all of its signals, as I learn how to trust it again after everything it has endured.

My port has been removed, a milestone that felt both relieving and surreal, like letting go of something that once tethered me to survival. In many ways, it marked a physical closing of that chapter, even if the echoes of it still live within me. I’ve slowly started to move forward with cautious hope, grateful that, for now, everything is going well.

But healing, I’ve learned, is not only physical.

Mentally, I find myself in the thick of becoming again, navigating the unfamiliar terrain of survivorship. Cancer didn’t just interrupt my life; it unraveled it, gently and then all at once, fully stripping away the person I once was and the world I once thought I understood. What remains is an array of things. Fragile and new, exciting and hopeful, uncertain and terrifying. I am learning how to rebuild, how to recognize myself in the aftermath, how to exist in a life that no longer feels the same, but still holds the possibility of meaning. It feels, in its own way, like a beginning again, not the one I had imagined before, but one that is just as real, just as worthy of being lived.

What was the most challenging part of your cancer experience?

The physical toll was heavy, but what challenged me most was my mind. What we’re taught to expect of cancer through films, books, and borrowed stories feels almost rehearsed. But living it is something else entirely, filled with quiet, unspoken intricacies that can only be revealed to someone when they unfortunately walk this path.

There’s this idea that illness is met with an outpouring of endless love, and sometimes it is…but often, it isn’t. The calls you get immediately after being diagnosed eventually grow quieter, and it doesn’t take long for them to do so. The presence of friends you thought was certain to be around you begins to thin. You come to understand, in a way you never wanted to, who is truly there and who was only ever passing through.

For six months, my world narrowed to the walls around me. I lived in complete isolation, unable to hug my parents, my partner, or even the few people who showed up. It was a strange kind of existence, one where I felt both here and not here at all, almost like a ghost watching her own life continue without her, unable to do anything about it.

There is a particular kind of grief in losing yourself while you’re still alive. In witnessing the world move forward as if your absence makes no difference, as if you never even existed at all. It chips away at something incredibly deep within you, your sense of worth, your place in the lives you once felt certain of. And in that silence, in that distance, something ferociously existential takes hold, a question of how you could ever possibly return to a life that kept moving, even when you felt like you had disappeared from it.

Six months into remission, there is a question that I still don’t have the answer to, and I don’t think I ever will. It is simple in its wording, but loaded with two very different meanings: why me? At times, it came from a place of ache, almost childlike in its confusion. Why did this happen to me? What could I have done to deserve it? How is it that people can move through the world causing harm and remain untouched, while I was brought here, to this?

Then the question shifts, it softens, and at the same time, grows immensely heavier. Why me? As in, why did I survive? After months of feeling invisible, of watching life continue as if my presence didn’t quite matter, it’s hard not to wonder what made me the exception. What unseen hand, what quiet decision, allowed me to stay.

Along the way, I met others like me, young, with their whole lives ahead of them, their own families, their own dreams of what their lives could be, standing at the same uncertain threshold. Some of us would make it through. Some of us wouldn’t. And it leaves you sitting with a question that will never have a clear answer: what separates one life from another? How do you carry survival when, not long ago, you felt so easily forgotten by the world? What does any of it mean?

Parts of the “before” version of me died during treatment, and parts of the “during” me died after it. At times I grieve both of those versions of myself, but then I remember that both had to go so that the “after” version of me could live. I think of them often, almost as if they are two entirely different people, separate from myself. I think of where those versions of me went, and how they could have just disappeared. Wherever they are I hope it is beautiful. I hope there is music, and I hope they are proud of the work they did, so I could live. I hope that one day I’ll make them proud of the beautiful life they gave me the immense privilege of living.

What advice would you give to someone who has just been diagnosed or is going through treatment?

If I could offer anything to someone who has just been diagnosed, or is in the middle of treatment, it would be this: every life chapter has a before, a during, and an after. Even now, you are moving toward something beyond this. Hold onto that with everything you have. Be intentional about what and who you let in. Protect your energy, quiet the noise, and tend to yourself with care. Hold onto the parts of you that remain, even if they feel small. They are still yours.

As you move through it, try to find a gentle balance. Let yourself return, when you can, to the things that make you feel like yourself. The small rituals, the moments of normalcy. But do so with care. The mind is delicate in ways we don’t always expect. It remembers. Through scent, through place, through feeling. Be mindful of what you attach to this time and remember that you may find yourself unable to remove the attachment to the memory of this time.

If you believe in something beyond yourself, whatever that may look like, turn toward it. There were moments where it felt like the veil between this world and something greater grew thinner, like I was being listened to in a way I had never experienced before. Speak openly. Ask for guidance. Let yourself be held by something, even if you don’t fully understand it.

Believe, even when it feels far away, that things can soften. That there is still something ahead worth reaching for. Hope may not always feel loud or certain, but it exists in the places we can’t always see. It is worth holding onto, and worth seeking out.

How did cancer affect your relationships with your family, partner, and friends?

My cancer journey brought me closer to my parents and my partner in a way that feels almost impossible to put into words. There are shades of that experience that belong only to the four of us. Moments that exist outside of language. They were my constant grounding force when everything else felt uncertain. And the truth is, I could not have done any of it without the three of them. At times, it doesn’t feel like my survival alone, but something we all survived, together.

My parents, in every sense of the word, gave everything they had to me during that time. Not just in the tangible ways like the appointments, the logistics and the constant presence, but in the way they showed up emotionally, relentlessly, without hesitation. There is something profoundly humbling about being cared for at that level and about realizing that no matter how old you are, you are still, in their eyes, their baby. And they will move mountains to protect you. Cancer stripped life down to its most essential truths, and one of the clearest among them was this: their love is unconditional, unwavering, and limitless.

With my partner, it brought us even closer, which up until that point, I didn’t know was possible. Milly, who I often say is as close to a perfect human as one can be, became a beacon of light and glimmer of hope through it all. Which doesn’t surprise me because from the moment I met her, I secretly had a deep inkling that we were destined to be in each other’s lives forever. But the truth is that for any couple, this is the kind of “testing” that strips everything down to its truth. She was with me at the urgent care and emergency room visits that led to my diagnosis, and she never left my side for a second, moving forward. She stayed through the golden hours, the dimmed days, and the moments I wished no one would see. What we experienced together only confirmed what I already knew… that she is the embodiment of everything I could have ever hoped for in a partner, and then some. Together, we truly learned the gravity held inside “in sickness and in health,” how love is not proven in ease, but in endurance, and how rare it is to find someone who does not run from the storm, but stays to weather it with you.

And then there were the friendships…

At the time, it felt like cancer was quietly eroding them. Like I was being left behind in a way I couldn’t quite explain. I made excuses. I extended grace. I told myself that people didn’t know how to show up, and that everyone handles hardship differently. And while there is some truth in that, there is also a point where absence stopped being “confusion” and started being a choice.

What I once interpreted as loss, I now recognize as exposure.

Illness has a hell of a way of removing all pretense. It reveals who is capable of presence and who can only operate properly in proximity to ease. There were people who, when faced with something as real as your “best friend” being diagnosed with cancer, chose distance…not out of inability, but out of pure unwillingness. And there is a particular kind of clarity that comes from realizing that what you once called friendship was, in fact, conditional on your convenience.

I have always been someone who leans toward understanding, who gives the benefit of the doubt, who holds space longer than I probably should. But there is a difference between being compassionate and being willfully blind. At a certain point, I had to accept something difficult but necessary: the way people showed up during that time was not accidental. It was reflective.

And once you see that clearly, you can’t ever really unsee it. I would never be able to forget the way I was treated by these people during the most vulnerable time of my life. Not because I wanted to hold onto resentment, but because it revealed something fundamental about who these people were at their core. Moving forward required honesty. It required choosing myself in a way I hadn’t before. And that meant leaving certain people in the chapter where they showed me exactly who they were, and who they have always been. The truth is that people understand the weight of their actions far more than they let on. Inaction is rarely as innocent as it pretends to be.

And in removing those people, in closing the door fully, without leaving it ajar, I found a kind of peace I hadn’t realized I was missing. A lightness. A return to myself. There is something profoundly healing about no longer making space for what was never truly there to begin with.

What remains now are the people who stayed without hesitation. The ones who met me fully, without conditions, without distance, without excuse.

And that difference is everything.

What do you want people to know about life after cancer and survivorship?

What I want people to know about life after cancer is this: you don’t return to who you were. And trying to will only leave you searching for something that no longer exists.

There are parts of you that are gone forever. Not in a tragic, empty way…but in a way that marks that something profound has happened. The person you were before lived in a world untouched by this kind of knowing, this kind of reckoning. And when you come through something like cancer, you carry a different awareness. One that reshapes you from the inside out. Learning to live with that, and to accept that you are not who you once were, is its own quiet, extremely complicated and weighted grief.

Because survivorship is not just relief. It is not just celebration. It is also overwhelming loss. It is learning how to exist in a life that looks familiar but feels entirely different. It is grieving versions of yourself, versions of your life, and sometimes, versions of the people around you.

There are people you will have to leave behind. Not because you want to, but because you’ve come to understand something you can’t unlearn: what it means to be truly loved, truly supported, truly held. And once you’ve experienced that kind of presence, anything less becomes impossible to accept. So, you let go, not out of a lack of love or out of anger, but out of clarity.

There is a deep, steady grief that walks alongside survival. But within that grief, there is something unexpectedly sacred. Because grief is not empty…it is full. It is proof that something mattered. That someone mattered. That love existed there, once, in a real and undeniable way. And there is something humbling about carrying that truth with you.

And yet, alongside all of this, there is a beauty so immense it almost feels difficult to name.

Because you are still here.

And that realization doesn’t land lightly. It settles into you slowly, and then all at once. You begin to understand that you have been given something not everyone gets: a continuation, a second chance, more time. And with that comes a shift in the way you see everything.

The world becomes sharper. Softer. More vivid. The smallest moments begin to carry weight. The way the light falls in the morning, the sound of someone you love laughing, the feeling of air in your lungs. Things you once rushed past, begin to feel worthy of your full attention.

You stop waiting, and you start living. You buy the shoes. You go to the restaurant.

You book the trip. You do it for the fucking plot.

You say yes to the things that once felt unnecessary, indulgent, or like they could wait…because you understand now that waiting is never promised. That someday is not guaranteed. That life is happening in the quiet, ordinary moments just as much as it is in the big, defining ones.

And in that, you begin to collect something far more valuable than anything else: moments. Memories. Pieces of a life that feel fully lived.

Because in the end, that is what remains.

Not the things you postponed. Not the things you denied yourself. But the moments you allowed yourself to fully step into. The memories you created. The people you loved, and who loved you back.

So hold them close. Closer than you think you need to. Say the things. Stay a little longer. Be a little softer. Be a little braver in the ways that matter.

And above all, love this version of yourself, with a kind of ferocity that does not waver. Because this version of you was earned. Through pain, through fear, through endurance. Through a kind of strength that not everyone will ever understand, but one that should never be diminished.

Life, in all its fragility, is breathtaking.

Not just in its grand, cinematic moments. But in the quiet, almost invisible ones. The in-between. The ordinary. The ones we so often overlook. There is something deeply sacred about simply being here, about getting to exist at all.

And once you’ve come face to face with how fleeting it all is, you realize: nothing is small. Nothing is insignificant. Not a single moment.

Life is brief. It’s Beautiful. It’s Unrepeatable.

So savor it. All of it.

Even the days that feel small.

Even the moments you think you’ll forget.

Because one day, they will be the ones you reach for.

The sound of someone you love’s voice.

The way the light looked that one afternoon when you were sitting in your room alone.

The feeling of being here, without even realizing it was something to be grateful for.

You don’t get to keep any of it.

Only the memory of how it felt.

Feel it now.

While you still can.

While it’s still yours.