Brain Cancer Survivor Reflects on Memoir and Her Journey

In 2003, 7-year-old Maggie Bushway started writing a book about her experience with brain cancer, while her father, Rob, began documenting their family’s story on a blog. Two decades later, Maggie, now 28, came across a box containing her dad’s printed blog posts and fragments of her unfinished book. With years of reflection on her health, family and hope, she felt ready to bring the pieces together and complete the story she began as a child.

In an interview with CURE®, Maggie Bushway reflected on rediscovering her childhood writings and her father's blog posts that recorded her early experience with brain cancer. She discussed the emotional process of integrating these pieces into her book, “Pearls: A Memoir on Childhood Cancer and Hope.”

Bushway shared how her family brought comfort during treatment and emphasized the importance of finding joy in small moments, such as building forts with her siblings or creating fashion show skits.

She also discussed how the writing process was exposed. However, her memoir became a form of therapeutic healing that helped her through the journey while facing new challenges.

Transcript:

I was given so many prognoses that showed that [I] wasn't going to be able to graduate high school, wasn't going to be able to go to college, live on my own and have a career. And I just want kids to know that you know your prognosis isn't your life. You can try to accomplish your dreams. You can push to make things happen. And just because the doctor said that you can't do something, it doesn't mean that you'll never be able to do it with treatment and healing and different kinds of therapy. In the case of brain cancer, you can find a way to make it happen.

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