10 Years Survival

10 years ago, without fanfare, I received an email from my radiologist that said “scans are perfect.”

It had been a year of clean scans since my sudden and unexpected relapse. The relapse that challenged my youthful belief that everything would be ok. The relapse that flipped my odds on my “good cancer” from a 90% 5-year survival rate to a less than 10% survival rate.

I recently found Brad’s journal entry from that day. In the middle of the night, he had googled the life expectancy of a Hodgkins Lymphoma patient who had a recurrence within the first 6 months of treatment. The numbers were grim. He didn’t tell me.

He wrote about how I was in the next room dancing and singing and packing for an upcoming trip. He didn’t want to be the one who broke my joy.

He silently held our new reality, terrified, and imagined what life would look like without me in it. He cried from the safety of the night, making sure I couldn’t hear.

Of course, I already knew the statistics. Like Brad, I also secretly googled and learned what we were not supposed to know: I might die.

And instead of worrying Brad, I danced and sang and packed for our trip, not wanting to break our joy.

For 5 years since that initial diagnosis, we held our breath. We put our future on pause, while living boldly in the present. We traveled the world. We connected with friends. We loved.

And then, we dared to breathe again. We dared to talk about our future - about family and careers and big long-term dreams. But we dreamed too big it seemed, and days later, Brad had a pain in his side and that pain turned out to be cancer. And that cancer would end up killing him - and our future together - 101 days after that.

For me, the next 5 years would be spent grieving alone. Grieving Brad. Grieving the loss of my innocence. Grieving the partnership of someone to walk through life together.

All while worrying - more than ever - that my own cancer would come back.

To be here today, 10 years in remission feels like a remarkable fucking feat.

To look back at everything I survived. Cancer, caregiving, death. Repeat.

I don’t always give myself credit for not only making it, but also somehow managing to create a pretty incredible life out of all that loss. Somehow managing to rediscover life in the wake of such profound grief. But today, I want to acknowledge myself for all that I did. For all that I survived.