At 2 a.m., Cat Janice was awake because the battery on her medical port was running low.

She was in hospice, living through the final stage of a cancer battle that had stretched across more than two years. But when she picked up her phone that night, she discovered something she never expected to see.

Her new song, “Dance You Outta My Head,” had charted on iTunes.

Janice began yelling in excitement, startling her parents, who came downstairs to find out what had happened.

For the 31-year-old singer-songwriter, the moment was much bigger than a chart position.

The song had become part of what she hoped to leave behind for her 7-year-old son, Loren.

A Lump That Changed Everything

Janice, a musician from the Washington, D.C., area, first noticed a lump in her neck in November 2021.

At the time, she did not immediately believe it was something serious. Months later, in March 2022, the lump was still there — and it had become larger and unusually hard.

That prompted her to seek medical attention.

She was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of malignant tumor.

What followed was an exhausting combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Even while undergoing treatment, however, Janice continued doing what had always given her a sense of identity: writing music, singing and sharing her work online.

Then came a reason for celebration.

On July 22, 2022, Janice was declared cancer-free.

For a time, it appeared that the brutal chapter might finally be behind her.

It wasn’t.

The Cancer Returned

In June 2023, Janice told her followers that the cancer had returned.

This time, it had spread to her lungs.

She went back into treatment and continued documenting parts of that experience publicly. In one video, she showed the moment her hair began falling out — an especially surreal development because she had coincidentally released a song connected to that same experience.

Throughout the recurrence, Janice tried to remain hopeful.

She told the people following her journey that she planned to be strong and keep sharing what happened.

But by January 2024, the situation had changed dramatically.

Janice said her tumors had suddenly tripled in size.

On Jan. 10, after reaching a point where she could no longer breathe properly in the intensive care unit, she entered hospice care.

She understood what that decision meant.

And with that realization came a new priority.

She Transferred Her Music to Her Son

Knowing that she might be approaching the end of her life, Janice transferred ownership of her songs into Loren’s name so that the proceeds from her music would eventually go to him.

Then she focused on one final release.

“Dance You Outta My Head” was not originally created as a farewell song.

Its beginning was much happier.

The idea had come the previous spring while Janice and Loren were riding together in the car. Warm air was coming through the windows as mother and son bounced around to music and played with words.

Together, they came up with a few playful lyrics and a small melody.

Janice recorded the idea as a voice note and saved it.

From time to time, she and Loren would return to it while driving. Months later, she finally developed the idea into a finished song.

What had begun as an ordinary mother-and-son memory eventually took on a very different meaning.

By the time Janice was preparing to release it, she no longer knew whether she would live long enough to see what happened next.

Her Followers Answered Her Final Request

As she entered hospice, Janice turned to the audience that had followed her illness and music online.

She asked them to stream “Dance You Outta My Head.”

Her goal was not simply to make the song successful.

Every stream represented something she could leave to Loren.

Janice explained that she wanted people to save and listen to the track because its proceeds would go directly to her son after she was gone.

She admitted she still hoped she would survive, but she was also confronting the possibility that she might not.

The response quickly exceeded anything she had imagined.

People began sharing the song widely.

Then, on Jan. 23 — two days after Janice celebrated her 31st birthday — she woke in the middle of the night because of the beeping medical equipment beside her.

Checking her phone almost casually, she discovered that iTunes had tagged her in a post.

“Dance You Outta My Head” was charting.

She could barely believe what she was seeing.

Her excitement was loud enough to wake her parents.

In a period dominated by hospital rooms, treatments and conversations about death, the chart news gave Janice something entirely different to feel.

Joy.

“My Art Is All I Have to Leave Behind”

For Janice, music had remained one of the few things cancer could not completely take from her.

Treatment could change her body.

Cancer could interrupt her plans.

It could force her into hospitals and eventually hospice.

But the songs remained.

That was why the sudden success of “Dance You Outta My Head” mattered so deeply.

Janice said she had wanted to release something upbeat and positive. Even as her own circumstances became devastating, she did not want her final musical statement to be defined entirely by sadness.

“My art is all I have to leave behind,” she said.

Those words captured the painful reality she was facing.

Parents usually imagine giving their children years of advice, birthdays, family traditions and memories stretching far into adulthood.

Janice was confronting the possibility that Loren would instead grow up with recordings.

But those recordings would carry something powerful.

His mother’s voice.

A Song Born From an Ordinary Afternoon

Perhaps the most emotional part of “Dance You Outta My Head” is that it did not begin in a hospital.

It began in a car.

There was no hospice care, no viral campaign and no final request attached to the original idea.

There was simply a mother and her young son enjoying warm weather, moving to music and inventing lyrics together.

That ordinary moment later became something Janice could preserve for him.

As her condition deteriorated, she could no longer control what cancer would take next. But she could decide where her music went. She could release the song. She could ask strangers to listen. And she could make sure any money generated by her work belonged to Loren.

The audience did the rest.

Thousands of people who had never met Janice or her son helped transform their little car melody into a charting song.

For Janice, the achievement arrived at the moment she had the least time left to enjoy it.

Yet that may also be why it mattered so much.

She had spent years creating music while undergoing surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and then another round of treatment after the cancer returned.

By January 2024, when medicine could no longer offer the future she wanted, she turned back to the thing she could still give.

A song.

And behind that song was a final hope: that long after she was gone, Loren would still have something created by his mother — something born from a sunny drive they once shared, carrying her voice forward when she could no longer be there herself.