Katie Vandrilla

Katie Vandrilla

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction, illness and fear all at once? This conversation brings together poet and host J Hirtle and childhood cancer survivor turned author, Katie Vandrilla, for a raw and often funny look at what it really means to survive something life‑threatening and then try to make sense of it years later.

J starts by sharing stark statistics about childhood cancer and his own experience of facing a low survival rate as a single dad. Katie responds with her story of being diagnosed with leukaemia at 16, just as life was supposed to be opening up. She explains being told she had a 90% five‑year survival rate and how even that hopeful number hit hard: one in ten children still do not make it.

As she puts it, "healing doesn't have a timeline. They can process 18 years later and that's okay." Katie talks through the two‑and‑a‑half years of treatment, chemo brain, missing school, and the strange mix of jealousy and guilt that can follow when others don’t survive.

You’ll hear how journalling during treatment turned into her memoir, **“C Is for Childhood Cancer”**, written to help young patients and their families find words for what they’re going through and learn to advocate for themselves. There’s lighter stuff too: her determination to graduate with her class, social distancing before it was trendy, and the adventures of Thumper, the toy rabbit who stars in her children’s books.

She also shares how a Make-A-Wish meeting with Johnny Depp and later volunteering as a wish granter gave her a sense that something good could grow from a very dark time. If you’re interested in survivorship, long‑term healing, or simply how someone turns pain into story, this chat might leave you asking what parts of your own past are still waiting to be unpacked.