I’m Ready to Move On From Cancer Treatment

I’m ready to move on. To take the next step in this journey. To stop using all of my energy getting through the day; to be able to make room for thinking about the future beyond treatment, beyond chemotherapy. I’m ready to be more than just the person going through cancer treatment, and I’m ready to focus on something besides getting through a year of chemotherapy/radiation therapy/immunotherapy. 

I’m not sure how it’s going to feel when I get my last round of Herceptin in two weeks. I don’t even want to call it my last round because the future is unknown and I don’t want to commit to an end that is and always will be uncertain. I want that moment to feel climactic. To feel final, to come out of that building and know that I am done with cancer treatment. I want to feel done, but I’m not done, and won’t be for years, technically. I want finality and I won’t get finality because there is no finality until the day that I take my last breath. 

I want to cry. To crumble on the floor at the base of the recliner that has been my own personal thru-hike for a year and sob uncontrollably. I want to let out the breath that I’ve been holding since 8/17/20, and know that I never have to go through this ever again. I want this thru-hike to be done and over with, but it won’t ever end. I want to move on and never have to think about cancer again or wonder if it’s back, but I can’t; none of us can. 

So what do I do instead? How do I navigate this phase of my life? How do I process this? As Tolkien so eloquently put it, “How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.” 

There is no going back. I’ve made peace with that, so now I go forward. I won’t weep. I won’t sit in that chair for the last time knowing that it is the end, because it isn’t the end, it is just one stop on this journey, one more moment in my life, a life that I hope lasts another forty+ years. Life is a gift, health is a gift, innocence is a gift, but eventually each of those gifts will be taken from us, some earlier than others. I will not shed a tear when they administer my twenty-sixth round of Herceptin, I will not call it an end, I will call it a new beginning. Maybe it will be the last time I ever have to get chemotherapy, maybe it won’t. 

This chapter is far from over for me. I still have ten years of endocrine therapy, follow-up appointments with my medical team, MRIs, mammograms, echocardiograms, transvaginal ultrasounds, blood work, and bone density tests in my future. But this chapter, the hardest chapter of my life, is going to be fading as the next chapter begins. The past fades to make way for the future. 

They don’t warn you about how hard it is to have treatment end as a cancer patient. They don’t tell you how terrifying it is to not be getting “medicine” to keep you “safe” from cancer coming back. And for the last few weeks, I’ve struggled with this new chapter coming, with the turning of the page. But it’s happening whether I like it or not, there is no holding back, so I will accept it. I will welcome it. I will sit for that last round of chemotherapy and then walk out of those clear glass doors ready for the next chapter to begin. Ready to fulfill the promise I made to myself on 8/17/20. I’m ready.