Hi all! It's been kind of a weird week on account of my week mix-up, sorry about that. I'll just go over everything again, in a bit more detail this time.
Hazel's cancer story isn't very complicated-- she has thyroid cancer that had spread to her lungs. The cancer causes her lungs to fill with water which would kill her over time. In the novel, she's on a clinical trial of a medicine called Phalanxifor that lowers the amount of fluid in her lungs.
Augustus' is similar, he used to play basketball until he learned he had osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. His leg was amputated and he is cancer-free at this point in the novel. Augustus admits that because of his prosthetic leg, he failed his driver's test three times, but he passed anyways as a "cancer perk", an incentive given to cancer victims out of pity.
Hazel and Augustus trade favorite books. Hazel stays up all night reading The Price of Dawn and buys the next two in the series when she goes out to the mall with Kaitlyn for her thirty-third half birthday. After Kaitlyn leaves, a little girl comes up to Hazel and asks to try her breathing tubes on. Hazel assures her mother it's fine and smiles as the girl thanks her and leaves.
Later, Hazel describes the plot of An Imperial Affliction, a book about a young girl named Anna with bone cancer, her one-eyed mother, and the "Dutch tulip man" whom Anna believes is a con man. Her mother falls in love with the Dutch tulip man and starts to test a treatment for the cancer when the book ends mid-sentence. She talks to Augustus, who is riveted with the book and continually asks spoiler-esque questions about the book, much to Hazel's amusement. As they're talking Hazel hears someone sobbing on the other line, and Augustus explains Isaac was having a breakdown. Hazel drives to Augustus' house to help comfort him.
Isaac rants about the futileness of life and death and basically has an existential crisis about suffering and loss. Augustus encourages him to throw/break some of his possessions to make him feel better, which Isaac does until he wears himself out, collapsed on the floor.