Today is day 829 of my cancer treatment, and it’s my last one.  Ever. I’m finally done. Stage 3 triple negative breast cancer that spread to my local lymph nodes, adios.  I’ve been on this last medication, a “targeted” therapy (not exactly chemo) for exactly one year.  It has come with its own fun side effects (top 2 are extreme fatigue and GI distress) but they’ve been mild compared to everything else.  829 days ago, I started IV chemo; 4 different drugs (taxol, carboplatin, cytoxan, and adriamycin), 16 infusions over 5 months injected into my chest, including one nicknamed the “red devil” (adriamycin). Halfway through that 5 months, I started Keytruda, an immunotherapy, to help the chemo do it’s job. 13 infusions of that.  As soon as my skin healed from surgery, I had 25 radiation treatments that took place over 6 weeks.  Before that finished, I started 6 months of xeloda, a chemo pill, that was added because some cancer was still found in some of my lymph nodes when they were removed during my mastectomy.  When that was done last August, I had a full hysterectomy to decrease the risk of other cancers because I have the BRCA1 gene mutation.  A few weeks after that surgery, I started this medication that I finish tonight, who’s goal was to decrease my risk of recurrence (which is high in my type/stage of cancer).  I’m looking forward to moving forward physically (mentally, I’ll get there).  It can take weeks or months or years to feel “normal” again, which will probably be a new normal. I have continued to push myself physically (within reason) because working out and running is what keeps me feeling like myself and is one aspect of my physical being that I have been able to somewhat control over these last 829 days.  

829 days of poison (good poison, but still poison) and removing organs from my body to stay alive.