Treatment is not the end of things

It's been almost a year since I updated this blog. I certainly did not intend it to be this way. There have been medical developments since I finished treatment, thankfully nothing that indicates a return of my cancer. But as I was so used to writing about treatment, once it stopped, my usual routine stopped with it and I found it much harder to think of topics to discuss.

A lot has happened since then. I have had scans four times (March, June, September, and December 2014). All of them have turned out clear so far; here's hoping for the rest to be the same as well. My next round of scans is at the end of March of this year. These will mark the "official" one year mark, after which my scans will decrease in frequency and I'll start being followed by Sloan-Kettering's long term team. They are internists who specialize in the effects of treatment on all the noncancerous parts of cancer patients' bodies. There are a number of long term effects that chemo and radiation can have, that varies by the drugs, treatment site, and dosage. I won't get into them here, but needless to say, I will be talking about them in future posts.

I successfully finished what remained of my Ph.D. work, defended my dissertation in early June, and deposited it a month later. Then Ashley and I at long last got married! We had a small ceremony in Champaign with a reception afterwards at a restaurant in neighboring Urbana. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to stay out on the dance floor on just one natural leg, though I was sore for an entire week afterwards!

I also fulfilled a dream, moving back to California at the end of July to work my first "no more school" job. I'm in the Bay again, which I had featured in this much earlier post as a place I was hoping I could see again. This time I'm hoping for a longer tenure here than the four years (2003-07) that made up my prior one. The very first time I'd come back here after I left (Summer 2010) was quite the experience. I could feel memories all around me as I walked around where I used to live and then found myself missing my former times there and hoping things could have worked out differently and enabled me to stay there versus having had to come back to Illinois to finish my education. This feeling went away in subsequent summer visits (2011, 2012) as I built new memories through my internships, where I was making progress towards my Ph.D. And then in October 2012, my symptoms hit.

Nowadays, I'm reminded of my pre-cancer life on an almost everyday basis. That I simply have to put on a prosthetic leg each morning is one of them, versus the past where I could just roll in and out of bed at my own leisure without having to take any extra steps. I can't lift heavy weights anymore because of the heart toxicity associated with doxorubicin, when in the past weightlifting was one of my favorite forms of exercise. I can't help but worry that my current healthy state is going to be short-lived when in the past I had no health worries at all. This all has an effect on me. I'd like to think this will all end up working out in the end. Leaving California the first time turned out to do just that, as I wouldn't have met Ashley had I not done so. But while the feelings associated with my first return began to fade at the end of that summer, it's been just over a year since I finished treatment and the pre-cancer vs. post-cancer comparisons are still going on strong. I'm certainly hoping that the same process will happen there as it did with all the 2003-07 memories showing up in 2010, but clearly this is going to be a much longer journey.

So just as I shared the journey of treatment with you, I'm going to share this journey as well. It's easy to think that you get treated and go back to life and everything is back to normal, but as I've seen over the past year, it is unfortunately not so simple.