Another dance with cancer.

I started this blog with back pain. Thus the name of the blog - back(b)log. It was a blog (or a log) chronicling my experience with intense back pain. I had a lot of readers then but it didn't create the community I had hoped to. I was experiencing something awful and I wanted to connect with other people who could empathize and understand what I was going through.

Instead, I learned to write and make people laugh, of all things.

Laughter is good medicine.

Then, I got breast cancer. I didn't write about that as much and I sure as hell didn't promote my blog posts on Facebook like I did with the back pain. I don't know why I isolated with the breast cancer. I remember the things I told myself back then but I haven't had any therapy about it so I'm not sure why, exactly, I was so intensely private about it.

I figured if anyone read what I wrote, then fine, but no one ever commented or said anything to me about it. It wasn't one of those viral stories of resilience and bravery except only to me and those who are closest to me and that was fine.

For whatever reason, I glanced at the last two posts on back(b)log dated January 6, 2022, and February 20, 2022. The January entry celebrated the start of a new year and a hope that after six surgeries related to breast cancer and reconstruction, that I would have a surgery-free year.

It was not.

The February entry celebrated the passing of six months since my last surgery. 

In the time between the January post and the February one, I had found a lump. This time, in the back of my right thigh. By May, it was the size of a baseball.

But in February, the lump was small and I didn't have a diagnosis which didn't come for another five months. It was undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS) - a rare, aggressive type of soft tissue cancer. In July, I started radiation. In October, I had my seventh surgery in three and a half years.

I am now over two years cancer free. I had zero surgeries in 2023 and 2024 was the first year I didn't drain my HSA account.

Am I anxious about it coming back? Some days, absolutely. But that's part of why I walk so much. I used walking to get ready for all those surgeries and I walked to help in my recovery from them. I also walk for my mental health and to manage stress.

It's just ironic to look back on this blog and see how I was celebrating survival just as I was in the process of discovering I had cancer again. But life goes on and I'm part of the living so that's what I'm celebrating now.