Danielle Gruberger | Survivor
Location: Los Angeles, CA | Pronouns: She/Her
For eight years, the signs were there—blood in my stool, relentless fatigue, and weight loss so drastic it left me unrecognizable. But like so many young adults, the symptoms were brushed aside as stress and irritable bowel syndrome.
In late 2019, I was living in New York, working as the senior producer at Vogue, and fully immersed in the fast-paced world of photo shoot production. The industry demanded long hours and the pressure to always be “on,” so I didn’t have time to pause and decipher what was going on in my body. But it was clear something was deeply wrong when my weight suddenly dropped from 125 to 95 pounds, my appetite declined to nothing, and my exhaustion was chronic. A local doctor drew a standard blood panel that did not include iron or protein levels, so I was deemed completely healthy with nothing to worry about.
In 2020, I moved back home to Los Angeles, hoping that slowing down would help me regain my health. But It didn’t. No matter what I did—resting, changing my diet, trying to rebuild my strength—my weight and mental health continued to decline. Little did I know, a cancerous polyp had been silently growing inside my gastrointestinal tract for years, blocking food, causing constant irritation, and slowly depleting me of essential nutrients. I was living with severe iron deficiency anemia, my body crying out for help in ways I didn’t yet understand.
It wasn’t until I got an incredible new primary doctor, who took my symptoms seriously, that all the pieces started falling into place. She referred me for an urgent colonoscopy, which I scheduled for Valentine’s Day of 2024 because I thought it was funny—and cancer was still not of consideration in my mind. Two days later, on February 16, I got the call that changed everything: I had colon cancer.
A cancerous 5 cm polyp and 1cm precancerous polyp uprooted my entire world. Within weeks, I underwent a laparoscopic colectomy to remove part of my colon—and with it, the cancer that had unknowingly controlled my body for years.
The surgery was successful and thankfully my lymph nodes were clear, so I did not require chemotherapy or radiation following surgical treatment. The next six months were spent recovering, with scans and bloodwork, and getting the last remaining polyps removed once the incision in my colon was healed enough for another colonoscopy. Then, on September 25, 2024, I was declared NED.
But being cancer-free doesn’t mean everything goes back to normal. In many ways, this part of the journey has been just as difficult. The emotional toll of cancer is something no one prepares you for. In the months following my diagnosis and surgery, I found myself trapped in a fog of depression and loneliness. The people I thought I could count on disappeared. Clients I had built relationships with moved on, and one even used my medical bills against me, refusing to pay my invoice for the work I completed throughout my week in the hospital and for the following year on his agency’s incredibly demanding project.
Life around me continued as I felt stuck and frustrated—adrift in the aftermath of a mortality check that felt invisible to the outside world. So I began creating collages that turned the overwhelm in my mind into beauty. It felt so good, I kept going and within a year, had completed nearly 100 mixed media collages containing my film and digital photography and a vast array of my medical paperwork.
No young adult should have to go through what I did—years of ignored symptoms, a diagnosis that came later than it should have, a lack of information that nearly cost me everything. So I’ve shifted my focus toward cancer advocacy and helping others heal through creativity—, both sides of the coin that have been the silver lining of my colorectal cancer journey.
“Listen to your body. Speak up when something feels wrong. And when the world feels like too much—make something beautiful out of it.”
