In December 2019, I wrote my very first blog post while preparing for my first chemotherapy treatment. Somewhere near the end I wrote, almost casually, “This will all repeat every three weeks.”
I had no idea what those words would come to mean.
I didn’t know that years later I would still be planning my life in three-week increments. Treatment. Recover. Repeat. Appointments. Scanxiety. Side effucks. Scans. Tumor markers. Prior authorizations. Treatment delays. Insurance bullshit. Fear. Anger. Anticipatory grief. Toxic positivity. Hope. Joy. Support groups. Cancer retreats. Patient advocacy. Meeting my amazing mentor. Becoming a mentor myself. Meeting the best people in the worst club possible. Cancer friends. Losing cancer friends. Therapy. Travel. French fries. Cancer conferences. Hawaii. Birthdays. Really bad days. Really good days. Making plans anyway. Regular life.
Then back to the infusion chair.
Every three weeks.
I also didn’t know that the private little blog I started because I wasn’t even sure how I felt about blogging would eventually become this.
Every Three Weeks.
I’ve spent the last few weeks going through those old posts for the first time in years. And wow.
I wanted to hug that girl. Sometimes I wanted to shake her. Sometimes she made me laugh my ass off.
She was terrified. She Googled everything. She thought every symptom meant her cancer had spread to her brain. She worried about losing her hair and actually lost all her hair. She worried about dying. She wondered whether she would ever stop thinking about dying.
But she also ate McDonald’s after chemo. Watched bald eagles. Went back to school. Fell in love with French Fry Fridays. Going to concerts and playing dress up. Traveled. Found community. Started therapy. And slowly started imagining a future again.
Somewhere along the way, cancer stopped taking up every paragraph.
That’s what I want this blog to be about.
Not how to “beat” cancer. Not how to stay positive every second. And definitely not pretending that metastatic breast cancer gave me some magical appreciation for life that I couldn’t have learned any other way.
I want to write about living.
The weird, funny, scary, exhausting, beautiful life that happens between one infusion and the next.
Because seven years later, I’m still here.
And every three weeks, I still go back.
