When Cancer Met the Wrong Girl: A Story Written in Notebook Paper and Grit
At 38, Samantha Lysk found a lump. At 39, her body was thrown into surgically induced menopause. These are the facts she recites with the same steady calm she once used to teach students or draft legal briefs. No drama. No self-pity. Just the truth, plainly spoken.
When artist Sandra Schustach first sat down with Sam through Twist Out Cancer’s Brushes with Cancer program, she wasn’t prepared for the tears. Her own. “She spoke of her cancer journey and struggles with a matter-of-fact steadiness and such vivid detail that it often moved me to tears,” Sandra recalls. Here was someone who had every right to rage against the unfairness of it all, yet chose a different path entirely.
The Philosophy of Moving Forward
Sam’s approach to her breast cancer diagnosis is deceptively simple: accept what you cannot change, control what you can. “Yes, we can, of course, scream, cry, and question ‘why me,’ but that doesn’t change what is,” she explains. “All it does is keep us feeling down, defeated, and helpless.”
So instead of wallowing, she made choices. She assembled her cancer care team at MD Anderson. She selected her treatment plan. She picked out what shows to binge during recovery. Small acts of agency in a situation where so much felt beyond her grasp.
Her gratitude is specific, not generic: grateful she found the lump early enough to still be here for her kids. Grateful she didn’t need chemotherapy. Grateful she can continue with life “almost normally, even if my body no longer feels quite the same.”
And on the tough days? “At the end of every tough day, is the beginning of new day with yet another opportunity to show cancer it messed with the wrong girl.”
Art as Evidence
Sandra knew immediately that this story couldn’t be told on pristine canvas. “You Are Resilient” unfolds across a surface designed to look like notebook paper, a deliberate choice that honors Sam’s years in education, her work as a lawyer, and that pivotal age of fourteen that set her life’s trajectory.
The 18″x24″ acrylic and resin piece blends a handwritten poem with playful doodles scattered across the ruled lines: storms and crowns, wings and hearts. The images feel spontaneous, like something sketched during a long phone call or a moment of distraction. Yet each carries weight. The storms Sam has weathered, the hard-won victories, the aspirations, the love that sustains her.
“The work is raw and unpolished, imperfect yet bold, just like resilience itself,” Sandra says. She thinks about Sam constantly now. About her grounded nature. Her bravery. The way she meets life head-on.
What Notebook Paper Remembers
There’s something profoundly fitting about using notebook paper as the foundation for Sam’s story. It’s where we work through problems, draft our thoughts, make our lists of what needs doing. It’s practical, unglamorous, essential.
Sandra saw this immediately. The lined paper represents not just Sam’s professional life, but the way she approaches cancer itself: methodically, thoughtfully, page by page. You can’t skip ahead. You can’t erase what’s already happened. You can only keep writing, keep moving, keep filling the next line and the one after that.
The handwritten poem intertwined with doodles creates a visual rhythm that mirrors how life actually feels during treatment: moments of serious focus interrupted by flights of imagination, practical concerns coexisting with wild hope.
Resilience Lives Here
What makes Sandra’s piece remarkable is its refusal to prettify or sentimentalize. Yes, there are crowns and wings, symbols of triumph and freedom, but they share space with storms. The reality is unflinching: cancer is hard. Menopause at 39 is brutal. Bodies change in ways we never agreed to.
But Sam’s message cuts through the difficulty: we choose how we respond. Not once, in some grand dramatic moment, but daily. Hourly, sometimes. In the decision to focus on what show to watch rather than what was taken away. In the gratitude for competent doctors rather than grief over lost time. In getting up on a hard day because tomorrow offers another chance.
“It is not only Sam’s story, but a celebration of the quiet, powerful strength that carries us all forward,” Sandra notes. This is the gift of Brushes with Cancer. It creates these unexpected intersections where one person’s journey becomes a mirror for another’s understanding, and eventually, a reminder for all of us.
Sandra Schustach’s “You Are Resilient” doesn’t just honor Samantha Lysk’s cancer journey. It testifies to a simple truth written in notebook paper and crowned with doodles: resilience isn’t polished or perfect. It’s choosing to write the next line, even when your hand is shaking. Even when you’re not sure what words will come. Even when the cancer picked the wrong girl.
“You Are Resilient” by Sandra Schustach was created through Twist Out Cancer’s Brushes with Cancer program, which pairs artists with individuals touched by cancer to create meaningful artwork reflecting their journeys.