Fast facts (if you don’t have time to read the full post): Last week I had a CT scan on Tuesday, July 18 and got my results at 7:34 am via MyChart. Per usual, I am always by myself when dramatic things seem to happen. Luckily, the news was not horrific and I am NEAD! I see my oncologist on August 3, a day before my one year anniversary of finishing chemo. We will see what she has to say about my results. Eeeek.

Countdown to last day of oral chemo: 202 days

TO THE LONG VERSION!

“Did she tell you I had cancer,” I asked my new co-worker. It was a question that followed two instances in the previous minute that I struggled with word recall. I hate that words escape me. It embarrasses me and I hate saying that chemo has made me lose my mind, but it has. It feels like a stupid excuse. “Oh the 22 weeks I endured high levels of poison has made it so I can’t go a single day without forgetting multiple things.” I wonder all the time if cancer muggles believe me or if they think I use cancer as an excuse for everything.

The moment that question slipped out of my mouth I knew the phrasing was wrong. I have cancer. Not had. Why would I say that?

“Well, I mean have. Did she tell you I have cancer,” I rephrased. I don’t remember her response. I was caught up in my foggy thoughts and my mind went back to five days prior: Wednesday, July 19 at 7:34 am I received my CT scan results and things once more changed for me.

Where did I “learn” the definition of stage IV cancer? Was it in movies? TV shows? Dramatic retellings from friends of friends who were diagnosed? The reiteration of stories in the stage IV breast cancer group I am in on Facebook? Loved ones literally dying from stage IV cancers around me? Somewhere I learned that stage IV was a death sentence and that stereotype haunts me like a ghost. Somewhere I had this reinforced in my brain so much so that I both believe I am very close to dying at all times and somehow I am very much alive.

Every day since I finished chemo and radiation feels like the closest I have been to who I was before cancer. Here I am, eight days away from celebrating my chemo anniversary and I am still struggling with some things, but a lot of my journey feels like a bad dream. Sure I walk around titty-less and my hair is still rather short, but unless you know me you might not know that cancer is my sidekick in life. I am grateful for every cell that is healing and has healed, but I am not pretending that something ominous doesn’t live in me anymore. However, my general day-to-day functions no longer revolve around cancer. It just is kinda… there? I don’t truly ever forget, but I can get lost in the mundane routine of life and cancer isn’t a doom cloud anymore. It is just a cloud.

How lucky I am to be alive.

I had told myself that when it was time to scan me that either cancer would be everywhere in my body or that it would not be there at all. It was very binary. I had done the poison, had my boobs hacked off, and I am still consuming poison so it felt like a very either or type of scenario. But my results were not binary.

1. Interval bilateral mastectomy and right axillary node excision. No evidence of new or progressive disease in the chest, abdomen or pelvis. 2. Stable to diminished sclerotic bone lesions consistent with metastases.

MyChart Official CT Reading Results

It is true at first glance that these results read that I am no evidence of active disease (NEAD). I should be THRILLED. And I am. But the flood of emotions I felt as I read my results made me angry. This is never ever fucking going away.

Bones: The previously described rounded sclerotic lesion in the anterior superior aspect of what is again designated the L1 vertebral body is stable in size, measuring 1.4 cm on series 602, image 66, but is decreased in density compared with previous CT imaging. Additional small sclerotic lesions in the T9, T12, L2, L4 and L5 vertebral bodies are similar in appearance, while additional previously visible sclerotic lesions at L3, L4 and L5 have diminished/resolved. There are stable small sclerotic foci in the femoral heads. No new lytic or blastic lesion is evident. No fracture or malalignment.

MyChart Official CT Reading Results

I cried. I cried sad wet tears of happiness and sad wet tears that drowned my happiness and replaced it with February 21, 2022 rage. I had told myself this narrative that if you do all the things right, you get the cookie of being cancer free and that is just simply not in my life cards. The narrative I told myself was there to protect me; the armor I suited up and wore to endure chemo. Sadly, it is not armor that fits or can be worn in survivorship for me.

I recognize that stage IV is merely a classification and not a death sentence, but it feels like one when you are trapped in a body that is doing everything it can but cancer cures do not exist. Cancer treatments and medications can do a lot, but they do not cure. We pray, we hope, we cling on to anything when diagnosed with cancer. It is how people mistake us for being inspirations when we simply just want to live and will do/think/believe anything will cure us of this evilness. But the only results we can ever get that is close enough is NEAD. Or remission. Or whatever the fuck you want to call it. But once those little cells start fucking around, you are never safe again.

So I celebrate this milestone and honor the parts of me that are happy to be stable and devour life like it is the last pie slice at Thanksgiving. But I am always wondering when the shoe will drop and when my stage IV goes from being a classification to death knocking at my door.

Today’s song lyrics of the day are brought to you by Liza Minnelli.

“Well, all the odds are, they are in my favor
Something’s bound to begin
It’s gotta happen, happen sometime
Maybe this time, I’ll win

‘Cause everybody, oh, they love a winner
So nobody loved me
‘Lady Peaceful’, ‘Lady Happy’
That’s what I long to be”

– Maybe This Time, Liza Minnelli