Cat's Story: Courage in the Smallest Moments

The 30 Stories Podcast · Aug 11, 2026 · 38m

Fifteen years ago, when Cat was just about to go into her junior year of highschool, she was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer. She remembers the shock of hearing cancer discussed for the first time, the uncertainty that followed and how surgery and time away from school disrupted the future she had imagined. Her mother’s persistence helped move the evaluation forward, while her parents’ steadiness gave her somewhere to land when the diagnosis became real.

One of the episode’s most affecting moments centers on a photo shoot Cat did while she was still swollen, numb and healing from…