Fuck Cancer

Two pictures on either side of cancer treatment. The first one is back in November 2020 at the start of chemo and the last one is today, June 22, 2021 at the conclusion of my radiation treatments. In celebration of being done today I rang a bell and wandered up and down the halls of the treatment center yelling "FUCK CANCER!!" Nobody got pissed off or anything. Then I went outside and did the same thing for all the world to hear.

This has been a long and difficult road but I made it and I'm cancer free thanks to science and medical technology. I would describe modern cancer treatments as doing something brutal to your body in a very precise manner. It's just brutal enough to kill the cancer yet leave the rest of the body relatively intact. I believe in the future there will be more subtle ways to kill cancer that are less damaging to the body but this is where we are today. There is more healing to be done and continued work to get my strength back but I'm glad to be alive.

I'm lucky in that I've got a good survival rate but at the same time it's always discussed as a percentage of people who survive 5 years, or 10 years, or 20, and so on. My maternal Grandmother lived to be 104 and I always imagined I might live that long as well, but with this recent experience I'm not so sure. I'm 52 and I might live another 52 more years but I know my chances are reduced and that is ok. I will try to make the most of the time I have. That may include acts of great ambition and it may be sitting with good friends, visiting, and doing much of nothing.

Thanks so much to all the lovely people who healed my body and all the friends and family who supported me. There were dark moments along the way but none of it has been as bad as the worst things I imagined. I'm not done dealing with cancer - I face a lifetime of checks and scans and more treatments if it returns. But today I pause for celebration and say: Fuck Cancer.