Fast facts (if you don’t have time to read the full post): Happy two year cancerversary to meeeee. On this day in 2022, I was diagnosed with stage IIIa breast cancer, later moving officially to stage IV. If I thought my first cancerversary was a big deal, this one feels even sweeter. Two years down! Oh and I end oral chemo on February 25. Fucking finally.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Official last day of oral chemo: February 25!

TO THE LONG VERSION!

730 days with breast cancer.

I’m hard to fucking kill.

Did you know that my maiden name Rosenbaum means “rose tree” in German? It was a random fact I learned from the German exchange student in high school. My grandmother’s name was Rose and she sure did love tending to her rose garden in front of my childhood home. I have many memories of creamy white and blush pink roses in vases growing up and even more memories of sticking my nose so deep to chase the sweet scent that I found myself nearly snorting an earwig. Fucking bugs. And now as an adult, I have obnoxiously hardy rose bushes in my back yard that refuse to quit despite my neglect and attempted removal. It is not because I don’t like roses because I have a strange connection with them. Rather, I want to excavate and create a garden where they are perfectly located. I gave up on that dream last summer though.

Rose trees 1. Madison 0.

Dead roses hung from the ceiling in one of my first self portraits bald in 2022. I felt like I was dying. It felt metaphorical, connective, and tragic. And a part of me did die. Somewhere in the scorching hellscape of cancerpocolypse, a version of me in fetal position surrendered to the impossible journey that laid ahead of me. What I did not know was that under my body curled so tightly to preserve as much as me as it could was a rose tree. You can cut the tree back, literally to its roots, and slowly as the sun passes through the winter and transforms into the warmth of spring, the stems and roots begin to grow.

I began to grow.

I know I am worth more than a metaphor for trauma. I am a product of science working at it’s best and the timing of the universe. I’ve mastered survival mode. Now it’s time to stop and smell the roses.

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I’ve been counting down the end of fucking oral chemo since I literally started it on February 14, 2023. You’ve all see the countdown on my blog and my social media. It has kind of sucked living with an immunocompromised body for the last two years. Sure, it was a step up from doing infusion chemo and my side effects improved a bit once I was acclimated to the medication but being fatigued all the time, the fear of catching whatever viruses float about is really terrible. Other reasons I hate oral chemo:

1. I have literally hated that I had to refill my prescription via phone tag with the special pharmacy every 15 days or so for the last year.
2. I have to take two pills twice a day literally as close to 12 hours apart as I can get in order for them to work well.
3. They are decent sized pills so I always gag when I take them.
4. They make me feel nauseous if I forget to eat before taking them for breakfast.
5. The brain fog and memory loss and confusion is awful. I feel like my brain is fried all the time! A flat airspace full of nothing but fluff and a couple of bugs.

However, I do know that the benefits outweigh my annoyance. They are pills designed to track down cancer floating all nilly willy in my body and destroy them from the inside out. Science is fucking rad. And I am not going to lie, there is a part of me that is very uncomfy not being on oral chemo. It has been my weird little safety net. All I will be on now is my hormone blocking injection and pill. That is ALL that will exist in assisting in preventing more cancer. In theory, it should be enough but cancer is a sneaky bitch. Never trust a cancer sneaky bitch.

I met with my provider on Feb. 12 and got the all clear to stop chemo once I finish my bottle. I’ve been diligent to not miss any doses so that I really end on Feb. 25. So far, so good. I also learned that I have no scans in my future (again, terrifying…) unless my labs indicate that something is amiss. And now my labs are moving from monthly to every three months. My labs were monthly because of the oral chemo but now that I am finishing, there is no reason to monitor me so closely. CUE PANIC.

It is strange to be stage IV, a stage that has a 30% survival rate at the 5 year mark and my providers are like, “Mmm you good. Have fun out there!” I cried a lot in the appointment. My tears were happy but also terrified. These are milestones I rarely even allowed myself to fantasize about because I was afraid of not making it and here I am… being pushed out into the world and told that I am okay. You would never know I have cancer unless you look at or know about my breasts being amputated, lymphedema in my arm, constant bruising on my stomach from the monthly injections, my derpy port, and ongoing neuropathy in my fingers and toes. Am I okay?

I am okay. I am going to be okay.

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

“I am not afraid of the things under my bed
Plus the things inside my head
They scare me, they scare me
When I am alone, all my fears, they show their face
Yeah, I swear there’s no escape
They scare me, they scare me

Knock, knock, knock
Someone let me out
Knock, knock, knock
I try and shut them out, but…

Walls cave in
I guess it’s time I let them fall
I’ve been holding in
Everything for far too long
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down
I’ll share this gift
And when it’s time I know I’ll fly again”

– Phoenix (feat. Sasha Sloan), Kaskade