When Rachel Moscovich was 36, single and facing her third cancer diagnosis in 2015, she found the support she didn’t know she needed in the last place most would look: Tinder.
She is one of the more than 42 percent of all cancer patients over the age of 20 that are unmarried when they get diagnosed with cancer.
The third diagnosis devastated Rachel, but, at first, she was afraid to tell even her closest friends what she was going through.
But with some coaxing from her therapist, she found joy, comfort, distraction and most of all a sense of being alive in an unlikely place: Tinder.
Rachel Moscovich, 38, was single when she was diagnosed with cancer for a third time, but says ‘some of the most supportive men in my life last year, I met by swiping right’ (file image)
Rachel’s first cancer diagnosis was for a small breast tumor, making her one of only 70,000 American men and women who get breast cancer between the ages of 15 and 39.
Rachel, a writer and urban planner in Los Angeles, recalls sitting completely alone with her oncologist when he broke the news to her in a piece she wrote for the Washington Post.
‘People love to critique today’s dating world. They say it’s fickle and superficial, that relationships are fleeting. While there is truth to that, the flip side is we’re more connected than ever,’ she writes.
‘When you live alone, no one knows when you come and go, or where you’re going. No one has to see you scared. I figured this would go down as just that — simply a scare — and I could get through that on my own,’ she says.
Instead, after that third diagnosis she found herself shaken and alone.
By the time she got the third diagnosis – a second bout of Hodgkin’s lymphoma – on Christmas Eve of 2015 – this time with her parents by her side – Rachel certainly did not know anyone who had shared her experience.
Rachel got through two battles against cancer on her own, but the thought of facing a third alone overwhelmed her as anxiety shook her to the core she told the Washington Post.
She turned to the internet to find solace in the stories others battling cancer had shared.
There were plenty to read, and just being able to identify with someone’s experience – even if it was from across the country – brought Rachel some brief comfort, but ‘when I got to the part where they wrote they were “so thankful for my husband/my wife/my rock,” they would lose me,’ Rachel said.
The divergence of her path form those bloggers’ was a sharp and terrifying one.
A 2016 study found that unmarried women battling cancer are at a 15 percent greater risk of dying of the disease than those who face it with a partner.
She started seeing a therapist who was about Rachel’s same age, and could relate to the kinds of support networks she might have and the ones she might be without.
One [guy] took me skiing before chemo therapy and shouted after me ‘YOLO!’ as I headed off to my appointment. Which was, I daresay, deeply profound
As she faced her odds, Rachel ‘didn’t have a rock by my side. But my therapist tried to get me to see the pebbles I had scattered all around,’ Rachel wrote.
Several studies have shown that, while they lack that one person who is always there, single people actually have stronger social networks and relationships.
Rachel says her therapist told her: ‘If you’re open to it, it could be that being single will allow you to accept the love and support from those around you more fully.’
So Rachel decided to seize her opportunity. With a ‘gulp,’ she says she started telling her friends, former flames and even Tinder dates about her diagnosis.
‘I leaned into the discomfort and told my friends that I was doing my best but that I felt alone and afraid. These were tough conversations,’ she says.
She found a wellspring of support from her friends once she let them in, but was shocked at the incredible ability of one group to make her feel better and more alive: the men.
‘I am so grateful for the men. There were a handful I like to call “my Tinder guys,” and there were others,’ Rachel says.
‘For those who believe Tinder to be a shallow cesspool, know this: Some of the most supportive men in my life last year, I met by swiping right,’ she adds.
By having not one, but several very different men in her life, Rachel found forms of support and enjoyment she likely wouldn’t have even dreamed up for herself.
With her myriad of men, she was whisked off to shoot guns and ski the slopes.
The latter ‘took me skiing before chemo therapy and shouted after me “YOLO!” as I headed off to my appointment. Which was, I daresay, deeply profound,’ Rachel wrote for the Washington Post.
Those men made me feel as if nothing had changed. Which was, I realized, what I desperately wanted
Rachel got one arm to cry on, another to grip when she accidentally used too much of her medical marijuana, a chorus of encouraging words and a ‘focus group’ of eyes and hands to help her choose her new breasts.
‘I didn’t have the one guy to come home to, or hold my hand, or be my rock. Instead, I had many who in bits and pieces comforted me, distracted me and gave me hope that things would get better,’ she says.
More than anything, she says, ‘they made me feel as if nothing had changed. Which was, I realized, what I desperately wanted.’
Dating today – particularly through online platforms like Tinder – has gotten a bad rap from the people doing the dating and scientists alike for being too shallow and alienating us from meaningful connections.
But Rachel is living proof that it doesn’t have to be that way.
‘While I’m eternally grateful to my friends and family, it was the guys who gave me certainty I was still present in the world of the living. I’m not sure anything is more life-affirming than love, sex or simple flirtation.
‘Whether they were feeding my ego, my lust or my heart, they made me feel the thing I wanted most to feel: alive,’ she writes.