I have cancer. Fucking cancer. Fucking fuck fuck. 

Fuck.

I hope the more I say it and the more I type it, I can grab hold of the magnitude of that word. It feels so far away. None of the questions I have matter at this point in time. How this happened or why I didn’t know until now gets in the way of me asking me the questions that can save me. What do we do next? Where do we go from here? I can’t help but mourn those questions that won’t receive answers. I am not an overly analytical person since I am very heavily driven by emotion, but I keep looking at this situation analyzing how my cells went rogue and I had no idea. 

Excerpt from 2/22/2022 – Day 1: Fuck

The version of me in 2022 was already so wise. “How this happened or why I didn’t know until now gets in the way of me asking the questions that can save me. What do we do next? Where do we go from here?” That certainly did not stop me from screaming into the doom cloud void that is cancer over and over begging the universe to tell me ~wHy~ this was happening. I still sometimes wonder why but I scream less now. That is an improvement! Imagine what I can accomplish by this time next year!

365 days of cancer. One whole fucking year. Happy fucking cancerversary to ME. I’ve seen all the amenities hell has to offer and I’d like a refund in the form of returning my boobies, please.

Like today I really miss my nipples. Who would have thought you could miss something like that?! NIPPLES! Next time you nip out in your party dress, let it happen. Laugh. Say, “Good job, you perky little beasts!” Because YOU have nipples and I never will ever again. Okay, I will lay off the awkward guilt trip. But do compliment your nip nops. Nipples are cool.

Someone asked me why I celebrated the day I was diagnosed. It is a weird date to acknowledge. It is my death date and my birth date. But a cancerversary is so much more than that. Every milestone on a journey with cancer is worth celebrating, honoring, and acknowledging no matter how big or how small. Surviving a year as technically de novo stage IV (a new term I learned meaning the first occurrence of cancer in the body) is a big fucking deal. Yeah, I know they wrote me down as stage IIIa but this whole time I was stage IV. Those mets in my spine have been there since my initial scans last March. My oncologist said if it was cancer, the chemo would kick it. Scans after chemo in August showed no change. Scans in November showed change. Like I get cancer and its like a form of a worst case scenario. I can’t go down in staging. I guess if I am going to get cancer I might as well do it really well.

Back to “why.” Not everyone who gets a diagnosis gets to make it through. I lost two of my aunts with cancer during treatment. It was a literal reminder that cancer at any time can stop responding to treatment. I feel like I have said this a lot lately but you can do it all “right” (treatment, eat well, exercise, be a good human, etc.) and it just might not be enough. So every day is a gift and I love celebrating life. And honestly I will justify almost anything as a reason to buy myself a cake. In the past week I have bought myself two cakes.

Life is short. Eat the fucking cake.

Anyway, I am here. I am grateful my body is responding to medication and I hope it does for a long time. But today on my cancerversary I also mourn those who didn’t make it. My aunts. My sister’s mom. My grandma. My friend’s mom. My co-worker’s dad. Countless people have not made it. It fuels me with grief and fear that is unexplainable. I keep wondering when my expiration date will come. Will it be in the form of cancer? Or something more sinister like a Canadian goose attack or McDonalds collapsing on me during an earthquake? I will never be able to understand how I am still here and they are not. Life is not fair. Cancer is just simply not fair.

So I celebrate 365 days of doing what I am told by smarter humans than me. I grit my teeth every time a needle punctures Harry Porter and the Prisoner of Cancerban. I chase my pills with water knowing they are doing everything they can to keep me alive. I tell people how I really feel. I laugh when I want to laugh. And I share every part of me because if I am not here, I want people to have something of me to hold on to when I am gone.

Cheers to 365 more days.

Today’s song lyrics of the day are brought to you by Elton John.

“Don’t you know I’m still standin’ better than I ever did?
Lookin’ like a true survivor, feelin’ like a little kid
And I’m still standin’ after all this time
Pickin’ up the pieces of my life without you on my mind

I’m still standin’ (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I’m still standin’ (yeah, yeah, yeah)”

– I’m Still Standing, Elton John