After 4 surgeries, 12 rounds of chemo, 28 days of radiation, more than a dozen CT scans, and a couple colonoscopies... two days ago I achieved the 5-year post-treatment milestone and there remains No Evidence of Disease.
It is a happy milestone, one that sadly too few people see. I am beyond grateful. I am awestruck at the miracle of modern medicine, and the pictures we can take of our insides. I still greatly dislike IVs and medical diagnoses of any kind. I am still here.
At this point I no longer have to return to DFCI for regular scans or blood work. Time to cut the cord. To ease the separation, I can return annually for labs to check my tumor marker. This is for peace of mind and I will take it. In fact, at my checkup this past week, that marker had ticked up a little bit, for no apparent reason. I'll have it checked again in 3 months and then, sans the return of any symptoms, I'll be simply an annual visitor, passing through the lab. This is the happiest of outcomes, and it makes me so nervous.
I have a memory from the hospital. There was a day after The Big Surgery - I cannot recall now which one exactly - and I was returning to my hospital bed from the chair. I think maybe I had just gone for the day's walk, or it might have been the day the nerve blocks came loose... whatever it was, I was in the chair, and I was so tired. I remember it was the afternoon and the sun was slanting in through the window. The nurse was changing the sheets of my bed, these white sheets, and it was like she was glowing in this afternoon light, soft yellow halos around everything. She helped me to the bed and I sunk into these fresh clean sheets, and the bed was in the exact right position, legs up just a bit, knees bent just right, torso relaxed, all the pain meds working perfectly. I remember feeling so comfortable. In my mind, in my recollection, it is the most comfortable I have ever been. Imagine - 2 or 3 days out of major emergency surgery, treatment looming, all the unknowns - and yet so completely relaxed and calm, and peaceful.
I meditate on that memory, on that feeling of comfort and peace. It is the feeling I try to get back to. Graduating from survivorship maintenance is a relief and it is scary. Here's hoping we all find the comfort and peace we are looking for.
