20 tumors. Stage IV. 50/50 chance. 24 months.
These were some of the numbers thrown at 26-year-old Helen Bender when she was diagnosed with melanoma two years ago. Most people would crumble under the weight those numbers represent. But for Helen, she knew she just had to do one thing: wake up every day and choose to be happy.
Helen’s cancer story starts at a routine dermatology appointment when she was eighteen years old. Her doctor spotted a suspicious mole, removed it, and sent her on her way.
Two years later, the mole returned in the exact same spot. But this time it was a stranger who pointed it out to her.
I was at the Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores, and a guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, I think you need to get that mole on your back checked out,’” Helen recalls. “When I got home that night, I showed the mole to my friend’s mom, who was a nurse, and she told me to see a doctor immediately.”
Helen called and made an appointment with her dermatologist who again removed the mole but this time sent it off for a biopsy. The results came back positive for melanoma.
“My first reaction was embarrassment,” Helen admits. “I didn’t really know anything about melanoma. I grew up spending weekends at Dog River, but my mom always covered us in sunscreen. I had never been in a tanning bed, and I could count on one hand how many sunburns I’d had in my life.”
The doctor removed a few lymph nodes for further examination, but they were clear so Helen resumed her life, returning to the dermatologist for blood work and chest X-rays every three months for a year and then every six months for five years.
Two years after college, which was also the six year mark since her first sign of cancer, Helen was still seeing her dermatologist regularly for appointments, but now they had stretched out to annual visits instead of every six months.
“I saw the annual appointment pop up on my calendar, and I almost skipped it,” Helen admits. “I had just turned 26 the week before, and I still needed to renew my insurance. But I had noticed a lump along my jawline, so I went to the appointment and pointed it out to the nurse, who assured me it was nothing but that the doctor would take a look. A chest X-ray revealed a spot on my lung, which prompted them to schedule a CT scan.”
Around this same time, Helen’s mom had planned a spontaneous trip to Europe for the whole family, something they had never done together. Although the chest X-ray was concerning, Helen’s doctors told her to go on the trip, and they would schedule the CT scan for the day after she returned.
“I obviously had an idea that something was wrong, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it at the time, so I compartmentalized it during the trip,” Helen recalls. “My family noticed the bump on my jawline, but they had no idea the doctors were worried about it, so we were all able to enjoy the trip and had the absolute best time. We bonded so much, and the trip really brought us together. It was a God thing—strengthening our ties as a family, preparing us to take this on even though we had no idea what was in front of us.”
Her own worry set in when she got home. “I went in for the CT scan, and the nurse called me before I even pulled into my driveway on the way home and asked me to come back to the hospital,” Helen remembers. “When I got there, my doctor walked into the room and I could tell something was wrong. I remember him saying ‘Stage IV cancer,’ and then the whole room went black. I was just staring at him, the doctor’s face floating in front of me. Finally I heard him say, ‘Helen, can you hear me? Are you processing this?’ I called my dad and handed the phone to the doctor so he could tell my dad because I knew I wouldn’t be able to.”
Helen then called her boyfriend, Alec, and asked him to come to the doctor’s office. Alec walked in the room, and Helen said two words: “Stage IV.”
“It didn’t really hit me that I had cancer—Stage IV cancer—until Alec and I got home from the appointment,” Helen says. “We laid in the bed together and talked about all the plans we had made for the future that we didn’t think we’d get to have anymore: what our kids would have looked like, buying a house together, our wedding. All of these dreams we had—they didn’t fit anymore. And that was the hardest part.”
Helen spent the next five hours in the bathtub, releasing her grief but also rebuilding her strength. “I felt stronger after that really deep cry,” Helen says. “I think you have to have those moments to come out the other side. You have to feel the sad in order to feel the happy. I believe in the power of both.”
Helen’s dad called her mom and sister and broke the news to them so Helen didn’t have to. They all met at Helen’s parent’s house later that day and went to work.
“The paperwork and financials went to my parents, my aunt helped with travel, and my sister and Alec did everything they could to help distract me,” Helen explains. “I didn’t want to tell people until I got a grasp on things. My cousin’s wedding was coming up, so I decided to keep it a secret through that weekend so we wouldn’t ruin the day. On the way home from the wedding, I started calling people and telling them, and each time I said, ‘I’m so sorry, this is just as bad for you as it is for me.’ I would rather it be me than watch any of my friends or family members go through it.”
Helen quickly learned that her friends and family felt the same way. “When I first posted my cancer diagnosis online, it was like someone was calling me for ten hours straight,” Helen laughs. “It’s truly amazing how much people want to help each other. Our house was overflowing with flowers and casseroles, everyone was sending prayers, I was included in bible studies and prayer groups, and I felt all of it. At times it felt like I was running on a treadmill, but I got to hop off for a second because of my community. They gave me time and space to process everything. I have always tried to make a conscious effort in every encounter I have with someone to make sure they leave happier than before they saw me. I truly live that way, and I felt like I was getting all of that back, like all of that love just came rushing back to me.”
After the CT scan, they needed more imagery so the doctor ordered a PET scan, and Helen’s family filed in to her appointment with her to hear the results.
“At that point we knew I had cancer, but we thought maybe it wasn’t that bad,” Helen recalls. “Then the doctor broke the news that he could see at least six tumors, but by the looks of it, there were probably a lot more. We found out much later that there were twenty tumors in all.”
A new plan was hatched to head to MD Anderson in Houston to learn about another treatment option called immunotherapy.
“The doctors told us it was a 50/50 chance that the immunotherapy treatment would work, and this was as a last resort,” Helen explains. “They couldn’t safely cut me open in twenty places, so surgery was impossible. Despite all of that, my biggest concern was losing my hair. I remember immediately asking, ‘I’m not going to lose my hair am I!?’ I’m sure they were wondering, what is wrong with this girl? But seriously, I hate my ears, so losing my hair was just not an option!”
With a treatment plan in place, Helen was met with another unexpected trial: egg retrieval. Because of the treatment’s possible risk to existing eggs and future fertility, she was forced to make a decision for a future that was so far from her mind when she was just trying to survive.
“I wasn’t ready for that, but I had no choice,” Helen admits. “So in the middle of the cancer chaos, we had to go through that too, pumping myself with hormones that made me even more crazy than I already felt. But I never did a single shot by myself; someone was always with me every step of the way.”
The weekend before she was to begin immunotherapy treatment in Houston, Helen gave herself one last weekend of normalcy back in her happy place: the Hangout Music Festival.
“When my treatment plan was finalized, the first question I asked was, ‘Can I still go to the beach this weekend?’” Helen laughs. “I treated it as the last weekend to still be me before treatment started. I wasn’t going to think about it until my feet left the sand.”
Before the festival, Helen and her sister decided to message Zedd, an artist they are huge fans of who would be performing at the festival, to tell him that it was Helen’s last hurrah before cancer treatment and she’d love to meet him. Much to their surprise, he responded with “Absolutely.” They met Zedd before his show, and Helen told him her story. While Helen and her sister were watching from the side stage, the band manager walked over and brought Helen out on stage.
“As the song ‘Alive’ started to play, I stood next to Zedd and he said to the crowd, ‘Hey Hangout, this is my friend, Helen, and she’s been going through a little bit of a tough time, so I’m going to need your help: I want to see everyone hold up your phone and make some noise!’” Helen recalls. “Everyone in the crowd held up their lights and started chanting my name. It was a quick glimpse of hope, a true sign of how beautiful people are and how much they want to help others. I was a stranger to them, and they didn’t even know my whole story, but they wanted me to feel their love. After the show, strangers were coming up to me constantly saying, ‘You’re Helen! I hope you’re okay!’ It was overwhelming in a beautiful way.”
While there was so much unexpected joy, it was almost too good to be true. “I was actually with the same friend from years before, whose mother demanded I go to the dermatologist after seeing the mole on my back, the mole that a stranger pointed out to me on that same beach six years before,” Helen explains. “I’m not going to lie, when I got home from the festival I felt like it was my own season finale. At that point I thought I was going to die, and with that surreal moment on stage at the festival, I got a little worried; I thought that might be the final episode of my life.”
But she didn’t have too much time to dwell on it because she started immunotherapy that week. “Violent tremors, 104 fevers daily, nausea,” Helen remembers. “There were so many negative side effects of the treatment that I couldn’t really seize every day with the limited time I thought I had left.”
Helen was accepted into a clinical trial program that allowed her to try a new drug that could minimize the harsh symptoms of immunotherapy. Miraculously, it worked. “There were days when I would forget I had cancer,” Helen says. “It completely wiped out my symptoms.”
With the harsh side effects of her treatment more under control, Helen focused all of her energy on staying positive—for herself and for the people around her.
“After my diagnosis, everything was really hazy, I was just floating around in this ‘it is what it is’ mindset,” Helen recalls. “I only had 24 months to live, but I knew everything was out of my control—everything except my own mentality. Everyone was looking to me to see how they should feel, and my positivity allowed them to also feel that way. Looking back I have no idea how I got through that. ‘Fake it ’til you make it’ is very real.”
After a couple rounds of immunotherapy at MD Anderson, Helen was able to request to receive her treatment at home. At the Mitchell Cancer Institute in Mobile, Helen and her family received an unexpected gift during their first appointment: laughter.
“Dr. Persing was so lighthearted,” Helen recalls. “It truly was the first time we laughed since my diagnosis. He drew these little melanoma cartoons and used them to describe the way this disease works, masking itself so it can grow undetected in your body.”
While Helen was able to be treated at home in Mobile, she still had to go to MD Anderson every month for scans. She was able to hitch a ride a few times with Pilots for Christ, a charitable organization that flies time-critical patients in need of medical attention to their destinations for free. “We always had a caravan to MD Anderson,” Helen says. “My parents, sister, Alec, friends, aunts, etc. I was never alone.”
But there were moments when the company could be bittersweet. “My biggest concern was what would happen to my family after I was gone,” Helen admits. “I wanted to be alone a lot because of the pressure, and sometimes I wanted to be sad, so I would ask my family to leave so I could ask the doctors tough questions that I didn’t want them to hear the answers to. But my sister was stubborn. She always wanted to be in the room with me, shoulder to shoulder.”
After a couple rounds of immunotherapy and different setbacks and delays in the treatment process, hopes were down for survival. One afternoon Helen was getting ready for a “surprise cancer benefit” she thought her friends had planned for her on Dog River, when Alec dropped down on one knee and asked a question she wasn’t sure she would ever live to hear.
One yes turned into another when Helen looked in the mirror one day, months into the immunotherapy treatment, and realized the tumor on her neck was noticeably smaller. “The medication had actually made the tumors much bigger at first on my neck and my thigh, so the neck was a good one to watch because I saw it in the mirror every day,” Helen explains. “When I realized it was smaller, I drove to my dad’s office so he could see it, and we called my mom and she cried. It lifted our spirits. At my next appointment, the doctor agreed the immunotherapy was working, and I thought to myself, ‘Now I have a chance.’ The floating stopped. My feet touched the ground again. I knew I could attach then and fight.”
And fight she did. Helen was at MD Anderson for her monthly scan, ten months after her initial diagnosis, when a new doctor walked in and simply said, “They’re gone.”
“My mom and I looked at each other and said, ‘Are we in the wrong room?’” Helen laughs. “The doctor said, ‘No, there is no sign of melanoma.’ It took a while to hit me, but my mom was already shouting to the rooftops and stepped out of the room to call everyone she knew. Tears just started rolling down my face. And then everything hit me all at once, what I had been through. I laid my head on the doctor’s chest and just cried. My mom and I went shopping in Houston afterward. We were in a boutique, and I stepped outside to FaceTime a friend with the good news. When I went back inside, my mom had told the whole boutique, and they all screamed ‘Congratulations!’ When we got home, I went upstairs and cried on the shower floor for an hour. Then I got in the bed and slept for 16 hours straight.”
Helen and her mom flew back to Mobile the next day to a welcoming committee at the airport. “Our family and friends were waiting with signs for us, and we went straight to a Mardi Gras party where I was hugged by about 200 people,” Helen laughs. “It was a great welcome home. Their joy became my joy, and it really lifted me up and buoyed me.”
A few weeks later, Helen stole another dream back from the clutches of cancer: her wedding day. A choir sang, “Oh, Happy Day” as Alec and Helen walked down the aisle as husband and wife. “I was always so worried our wedding would be a little sad,” Helen admits. “And everyone was still crying, but it was relief they were feeling, pure joy.”
One of the hardest parts of receiving a cancer diagnosis for Helen was the guilt that came alongside it, feeling responsible for causing the most traumatic event for the people she loved. “My grandmother used to sing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ before she put us to bed at night. When I called her with the news that I had cancer, she said she begged God not to take her sunshine away. You hate hearing how you’ve affected people, but it’s also nice to know how you affect people. I cherish my relationships and friendships even more now, and I want to return the love they gave me. Once you go through something like this, you want to reach out to others who experience it and help them. If you see darkness, you want to check in and help someone else who has seen it and help them find the light.”
Looking back Helen is unsure how she summoned the strength to fight Stage IV cancer—much less beat it. “A lot of moments I think I was straight up delusional to believe I could beat this,” Helen laughs. “But you have to be positive in the face of everything. At times, I asked, ‘Why me?’ I remember looking up the statistics when I had a moment by myself, and it said I had a 15-20% chance of surviving the next five years, but if my body didn’t respond to the immunotherapy, I probably only had about a year left, 24 months at the most. But I would wake up every day and do it again, and I’m really proud of myself. I was surrounded by the nervous faces of everyone I loved asking me each day, ‘How are you doing?’ They were looking for a sign from me for how they should feel. A smile was all they needed, and I could give them that.”
As far as what happens next, Helen is ready. “When I was diagnosed, I felt so young,” Helen recalls. “I remember feeling like I hadn’t experienced enough and wished I had done more, so there was some frustration with myself for not doing those things I dreamed about. You think you have time to live and dream, but this is the youngest you’ll ever be. Do it now.”
Soon Helen and her husband, Alec, will be doing just that, moving across the country to fulfill a dream that two years ago she never thought would have been possible. “We’re going to go live somewhere else, experience a new climate, meet new people, have an adventure. Just because we can.”
Along with a change of scenery, there are a few lifestyle changes Helen has made since her diagnosis. “Sunscreen every day,” Helen says adamantly. “I never leave the house without it on. I eat a lot healthier now, more whole foods, and I try to be mindful of processed food. I deleted TikTok. I try to spend less time on social media. I joined my first ever fitness class, and I’m a lot more intentional about keeping my body healthy.”
Despite these changes, there is one thing about Helen that will never change. “People always tell me, ‘You’re so happy,’” Helen laughs. “But I choose that. I wake up every day and make a choice to be happy.”
While Helen’s cancer journey saw its fair share of rough waters, the positive ripple effects of her story are already being felt far and wide. “Cancer is terrible, but there are so many good things that came from it,” Helen says. “So many people have told me that my story urged them to make an appointment with their dermatologist, and eight of those people have found melanoma because of it.”
For Helen these silver linings help erase the bad parts because now maybe others won’t have to go through what she went through, and to her, that makes it all worth it.
“For a while after I was cancer free, I didn’t want any cancer talk. I thought if I heard the word cancer again I would explode. It encompassed my life, so I needed a minute. But now I’m ready. I want to take my story and use it to spread awareness. I’m not wasting any more time. It’s all for good—all of this—and I’m excited about that now.”
Written by Virginia Kinnier