If you want to get something done, hire a cancer patient

You know the expression, “If you want to get something done, ask a working mother?” Surprising as it may seem, the same holds true for cancer patients.Conventional wisdom holds that cancer patients are too sick and fragile to work, at least not to their full ability. That can certainly be true in some cases, sometimes tragically. And I’m not suggesting that anyone should ever feel pressured to work if they don’t feel well enough to do so. But in many instances, the stereotype that cancer patients are too compromised to work is a myth. I know because I’ve been living—and working—with an incurable type of blood cancer for more than twenty-two years.  And I’m by no means the only one doing so. As of 2025, there were an estimated 18.6 million cancer survivors in the U.S., and a study in the journal Cancer found some 60 percent of patients aged 25 to 62 continue to work during treatment. An asset, not an anchor A quick bit of backstory: In November 2003, as I was leaving my office one