Picture this: You're three months away from your destination wedding in Cabo when you get the call. Cancer. Aggressive type. Treatment can't wait.
Most people would cancel the wedding. Most doctors would insist on it. But my sister Tracey had a different conversation with her oncologist: "How do we schedule my chemotherapy so I'm between protocols with enough time to recover for my wedding?"
That question changed everything.
The entire treatment plan—every infusion, every medication, every side effect management strategy—was designed around ensuring Tracey would feel strong and beautiful on her wedding day. The wedding became more than a celebration; it became a milestone that pulled her through the toughest parts of treatment.
This story came flooding back during my conversation with Julie Bach, whose work is revolutionizing how cancer patients approach travel and major life events. Julie lost both parents to cancer before they turned 55, then spent the next 20 years fighting an industry that told cancer patients they couldn't live normally.
The travel industry's dirty secret? Most spas and resorts were turning cancer patients away. Julie tells stories of people flying 17 hours to the Maldives only to be told at the spa door that they couldn't be touched. Therapists crying. Security walking patients back to their rooms. Everyone devastated because fear, not facts, was driving policy.
"I never expected it to take 20 years," Julie told me. Twenty years to educate an entire industry that cancer patients aren't contagious, that touch can be healing, that joy doesn't stop because you have cancer.
But here's what Julie discovered that changes everything: Cancer patients who plan travel—even if they never take the trip—show better treatment outcomes. The planning itself becomes medicine. Looking forward becomes healing.
My sister learned this intuitively. After her wedding, when she faced the next round of treatment without that milestone to anticipate, it became psychologically harder. So they immediately started planning their honeymoon.
Julie's work proves that travel during cancer isn't about running away from reality. It's about living inside it. It's about telling cancer: "You have to fit into MY life."
The question that could change your entire cancer experience: What are you looking forward to?
Not just surviving until. Not just getting through. What are you actively anticipating with joy?
Because as Julie says, cancer patients aren't just fighting a disease—they're fighting for the right to live fully while doing it.
Want to hear how Julie is training travel advisors to serve cancer patients? How to find cancer-friendly spas? The one thing you must tell every massage therapist? Listen to the full episode and discover why travel might be the best medicine you're not taking.
