"Cancerversary"

A dispatch from the Denovo Rodeo—10/13/25

My three year ”cancerversary” is coming up and while the term doesn’t appeal to me, I like the other options even less. If I were to write “I was 50 years old when I was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer” or, “Three years ago I went in for a routine mammogram…” I’d feel as though I was promising you a Story, one with a meaningful narrative arc, one that you might learn from or feel inspired by. In our culture there’s a lot of pressure for the Sick to deliver inspiration to the Well. So I’m resisting the urge to present my experience in a tidy, palatable way. I won’t iron out the wrinkles.

Detail from Lucretia, Artemisia Gentileschi

Whatever language other people use to tell their cancer stories is fine by me of course. But to me, the clunky term “cancerversary” sounds appropriately irreverent; it both marks and mocks the date I was diagnosed with the cancer that is likely to kill me in the next several years. Median survival for someone in my position is five years, and I’m three years in. Treating the anniversary of my diagnosis with solemnity feels like capitulation.

Nonetheless, I’ve been gently checking in with myself as the date approaches—asking myself how it feels to be at the three year mark. Year one and two felt similar to one another — everything I experienced was new and shocking. Those two years were filled with traumatizing novelties that felt simultaneously very real but also like a nightmare I might wake up from. In year three, my life with metastatic breast cancer is revealing itself to be a pattern, a habit. These days my diagnosis feels more permanent.

A metaphor: Three years ago I came to a seam. It was a rush job, and messy. Until I came to it I had no idea that my first bolt of fabric was about to run out, but it was, and it did, rather abruptly. The texture of this new, patched-in life is totally different from that of the life I now refer to as the before, it snags and itches. However, I’ve noticed that now, at year three, the texture of this new fabric is not constantly pulling on my attention, despite continuing to be wildly uncomfortable.

(This seems like the right moment to let you know that I will not be talking about “acceptance”, a word which, in my opinion, minimizes and flattens the experience of the Sick in order to soothe the feelings of the Well. A word and concept that gets bandied about so often in relation to cancer that it’s hard as someone living with incurable cancer to ignore the feeling that I’m expected to express “acceptance”—that without it my narrative arc won’t end satisfactorily.)

If life is a continuous piece of fabric, mine just happens to be transected by a big, sloppy seam that no one, including me, can help but notice. A terminal diagnosis really draws the eye. Along with my growing sense of cancer permanence comes the annoying awareness of its flip side, i.e. the final, looming impermanence of death. In considering how the before led to the now, I can’t help but wonder about my ongoing story, the meaning of it, even though it’s my firm belief that there’s no such thing. I can’t help but be aware of how close I am to completing my narrative arc, be it real or imagined.

And while anyone paying attention knows that meaning is a shapeshifter created solely by the mind and that permanence is Not-A-Thing, I can’t help hoping that my current state of equipoise will last indefinitely. You see, I’m on my “first line” of treatment, treatment which is (theoretically) keeping my cancer in check. When my cancer finds a way to resist it (as cancer always does) and starts spreading again, I’ll be put on my second line, and then my third, etc, etc. Each successive line will likely fail sooner than the last, and once all available treatments have been exhausted, I will be left to choose between staying at home to succumb to my disease or going into hospice. My bolt of fabric will eventually, truly, run out. When I think about this—leaving the world before I imagined I would—I mostly dwell on the unfinished work I’ll be pulled away from—the work of loving the people around me, my husband and kids especially.

So that’s where I’m at. These last three years are not separate from the rest of my life, despite how it feels. They’re part of the messy, patched-up whole. And my experience of being alive will be constant—until it’s not.

Truthfully, the only thing I can say for sure is that, right now, I’m still wearing the fabric that was so roughly patched into my life three years ago. It’s a fabric that is jarringly unfamiliar, but it’s also the only thing that’s keeping me warm.