Chasing Life (2014): Leukemia at Twenty-Four

April Carver is a 24-year-old aspiring journalist at a Boston newspaper, juggling a career break, her widowed mother, a rebellious sister and her grandmother, when her estranged uncle George — an oncologist — tells her that her bloodwork is abnormal and that she has leukemia. Much of the first season is built on her decision to conceal the diagnosis from her family and colleagues while chasing the story that will make her name, and on the ethically murky arrangement of being treated by her own uncle. The search for a marrow donor surfaces Natalie, a half-sister born of her late father's affair. April goes through treatment, reaches remission, and builds a relationship with Leo, a fellow young patient. In the second season the cancer relapses; she eventually decides against further trials or transplants and travels to Italy to live out the time she has on her own terms. The series was cancelled after two seasons, so the story stops there rather than resolving.

Spoilers throughout. Discussing the cancer storyline means discussing how this ends.

The show is at its best on the social mechanics of a young adult's diagnosis: the impulse to hide it, the fear of being redefined at work as the sick one, and the way serious illness lands in the middle of a career and a dating life rather than replacing them. A physician reviewer singled out the early signs — vomiting blood, needing transfusions before treatment even begins — as a realistic hint that the disease was already advanced, and praised the scenes of April simply talking with her doctor as the show's most valuable material. The half-sister storyline also captures something true about how donor searches drag family secrets into the open.

The pacing is the biggest liberty: April absorbs the diagnosis and moves through her life at a plot-friendly rhythm where an aggressive leukemia would drive urgency the series mostly declines to show. Having her treated by her own uncle, without a frank discussion of consent or of consequences such as infertility, is an arrangement no oncology service would permit. Across both seasons she is frequently shown looking and functioning well, with the grind of treatment displaced by bar fights, shopping trips and romance.

Leukemia is named on screen — April's uncle tells her so in the pilot, and the show uses the word repeatedly. The subtype is a different matter, and the two have been conflated.

The claim that April has acute myeloid leukaemia traces to a single 2014 magazine column by a physician-writer reviewing the show. That same writer, reviewing it again a year later, described the illness only as "a terrible form of leukemia". The series' own episode summaries name no subtype at all, and neither does its reference material.

So: leukemia is what the show says. AML is what one reviewer said. Only the first belongs on this page as fact.

Two things the series raises are worth separating from the melodrama.

The first is the conflict of interest at its centre. Being treated by a relative is not a quirky premise; it is the thing oncology services specifically prevent, because a doctor who is also family cannot hold the line on consent, on bad news, or on the conversations a patient may not want their relatives to hear. If you ever find yourself in a version of this — a family friend, a relative, a colleague offering to handle your care — it is entirely reasonable to ask for someone else.

The second is fertility. April's treatment proceeds without the conversation, and for a woman in her twenties that is a serious omission. Fertility preservation is discussed before treatment begins, not afterwards, because some options close once treatment starts. If nobody has raised it with you, raise it yourself.

And on the subtype question the show ducks: acute and chronic leukemias are genuinely different situations with different treatments and different timelines. Knowing which one you have is not a technicality.

A film is not a diagnosis, and a dramatised illness is not a guide to your own. What a story like this is genuinely good for is lowering the barrier to a conversation you might otherwise put off.

If something in your body has changed and stayed changed for a few weeks, that is worth raising with a doctor — not because it is likely to be cancer, but because most of the time it will not be, and finding that out is the point. Where screening exists for a cancer, it is the only thing on the list you can do before anything is wrong at all. See screening and possible warning signs.

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Chasing Life is honest about what a diagnosis does to a twenty-four-year-old's job, family and dating life, and dishonest about almost everything clinical around it. Take the first part and leave the second — and if a relative ever offers to be your oncologist, say no.

This page describes a work of film or television for education. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a judgement of anyone's real medical care. Spotted an error? Please email [email protected].