6th Cancerversary

The world spins
as a beeping sound echoes around me--
alien warfare or 
the distant hums of a submarine, 
I imagine.
I feel myself falling through space,
all around me is dark,
both claustrophobic and endless,
a humming contradiction.
I must remain completely still,
arms locked overhead, 
face pressed downward:
frozen in time in a place
where time doesn't exist
except for memories of 
all the other moments
spent trapped here.
The machine groans and bleeps
and thumps and clunks,
a thundering cacophony;
underneath it all, 
the quietest rock music,
and, barely a whisper,
a woman's voice,
from a million miles away,
telling me that my arm might feel cold,
telling me not to squeeze the call ball.

What a difference six years can make! I looked back at my previous cancerversary posts, and I realized that I’ve come a long way from those early years immediately following treatment. Early on, foremost was my fear of recurrence and the struggles of survivorship. I also focused on telling my story itself, and I think there is something immensely healing about that process. As time passes, my cancer story readjusts itself to fit into a larger picture of my life. It’s not as pressing.

As I went in for my annual breast MRI just two weeks ago, I thought to myself, Maybe I can ask my oncologist if I can let these extra appointments, scans, and exams go. What would it be like to not have to sit through another MRI?

I’m not quite sure if I’m fully ready to do that– or if it would be something my oncologist would advise heartily against, but I feel more distance from treatment this year. I do sometimes wonder if a better plan would just be to resume normal life and reach out to my team if I feel some new, lasting issue. After all, my original oncologist reminded me that the cancer could come back “anywhere” and “any time” (he was trying to be reassuring, lol!), so sometimes the extra focus on my remaining breast every year seems unnecessary at best and misleading peace of mind at worst. Even as I place more years between myself and my diagnosis, the music of the MRI machine will always manage to take me back to that terrifying initial diagnosis and the first rush of scans and tests. I’m always grateful to put another unremarkable scan between me and 2020.

In case you’re new to the blog or just curious, here are links to my previous cancerversary posts:

• 2-year Cancerversary
• 3-year Cancerversary
• 4-year Cancerversary
• 5-year Cancerversary
• In lieu of a 1-year cancerversary post (since I wasn’t writing on this blog yet at that time), here is one of my earliest posts on this blog from mid-2021, a vlog about my first year in remission