My posts have been a bit slower recently. Some of this is my attempt to get back to some sense of normalcy. Some of it is being back to work. The last weeks however, I have watched a close friend pass through their final weeks before this horrible disease took their precious life. Although Stage 1 comes with a better prognosis, the threat and thought of recurrence never goes away. The doctor was very clear that I could already have micromets circulating in my blood that no scan or bloodwork can detect, especially since I did not do chemotherapy. My risk actually goes up after 10 years which can be unsettling. My friend had been healed before, and this time it returned just so aggressively. Will I be different?
This has weighed on my mind for weeks now, more so than when I was going through treatment. Everything about this disease, and just this age in general, really makes you reevaluate everything. Things seem to have so much finality around them. Even watching my kids prep to leave the nest comes with this glaring finality of the end of an era. I wonder if I would still feel this way had cancer never become part of my life.
And in those dark moments that still come from time to time, I find small glimmers of hope that medical advancements can stop the suffering. This Penn Medicine article Sleeper cells: the science of cancer dormancy brings some hope that modern medicine may break through the secret of killing off sleeper cells. Understanding the mechanism by which they survive provides the key to making sure they don’t. Research and clinical trials are so important in finding a cure. This is what provides hope for survivors and helps honor those who lost the fight.
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