2025 was a crap year, and I am glad its over. Started 2026 in one of my favorite places (New Orleans), seeing my favorite music (Galactic) - and have lots more music on tap for this year. Music to support my soul, my heart, my mood, and my mind. Music is therapeutic and an easy way to tune in while tuning out.
2026 - Time for resolutions, new year, new goals, new thoughts. Once you have a cancer diagnosis, the passage of time, the marking of years, the anniversaries - they take on new meanings. 2026 marks five years since my cancer diagnosis. Jan 27, 2021 to be exact. The day the cancer came. The day my life changed, and the day I can never go back to "before".
For most cancers, including some types of breast cancer, 5 years marks a huge milestone: sighs of relief, sights of light at the end of a tunnel, thoughts of life beyond and without cancer. It's when you can start to apply for life insurance again, as actuaries think 5 years cancer free means you're back to normal risk.
Not so for my shitty and less common breast cancer. It is unlikely to recur within the first five years, and in fact the risk of recurrence is just starting for me. The risk will grow from now until at least 2036, if not further - because one rogue cancer cell can reactivate decades later and cause metastasis.
It is a heavy burden to bear, especially as people around me forget I ever had cancer, tell me I "look good", and think the risk is over. They wonder why I can't move on, get over it, put cancer behind me. As a recent cancer patient said to me, "I think the survivorship is even harder than the disease."
And indeed, it is. In the heat of battle, in the whirlwind of diagnosis, scans, lab tests, treatments, and pills - there is a plan. There is action. And often there are visible signs of what someone might be going through. But survivorship - what does that look like to other people? No one can see the scorched earth of my body that cancer left behind - the small everyday changes that serve as annoying reminders, never letting the cancer go.
I will never be the same. No matter how much self care, healthy habits, and clean living I do - I will never be the same. My curls will never grow faster than they can be cut. My physical stamina and strength will never be what they were when I was racing triathlons and training every day. Even with all the same goals and the same workouts, my body is not the same. Starving a female body of estrogen acutely overnight with ovary removal, and then for 5 more years with endocrine blockers does some things that cannot be undone.
There are silly superficial losses (my curls, my thick hair, my muscle tone), and then there are more profound and deep losses (see my earlier post about sex after menopause; sleep; thermoregulation; my total body fat distribution and pudgy middle). Sure, I feel grateful to be alive, to be looking ahead at stopping my endocrine therapy, and to not be in "active" treatment. But the risk isn't over, in fact it has just begun, and that alone is terrifying.
2 more data points on the journey ahead: one, my latest Signatera results above, showing no signs of circulating tumor cells in my blood and another big sigh of relief until the next test. My Breast Cancer Index test is now pending, and we'll use that to determine whether I need 2 more years of endocrine therapy, or if I can finally be out of active treatment and living in the "no evidence of disease" world of cancer.
No evidence of disease. Except there is evidence - it's in my scars, my painful arthritic bones, my dry private parts, my thinned hair, my aged skin, my crumbling physique - the evidence of my cancer IS there, it just takes a sensitive eye to notice.
