This week marks two years since my cancer diagnosis, and I still don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel about it.
On August 22, 2024, we learned I had Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. That date is also my husband’s birthday, which makes this anniversary complicated in a way I may never fully understand. Before cancer, August 22 was all about him: birthday dinners, presents, cake, and whatever we wanted to do to celebrate. But two years ago, it became the day we found out the cancer we were already struggling with had spread to my liver.
There is no separating those two things now, even though I desperately wish I could.
I don’t want my diagnosis to overshadow his birthday every year. Cancer has already taken so much from us, and I don’t want a day meant to celebrate him to turn into a day where everyone worries about me. I want to wake up excited for his birthday, make plans, buy him something silly, go play pool, and let August 22 be his again. Still, my body remembers what this date means, even when I try not to think about it.
That’s where the whirlwind of emotions comes in, because I am so unbelievably happy to still be here.
Two years ago, I had absolutely no idea what my life would look like today. When someone tells you that you have Stage 4 cancer at 35 years old, your brain doesn’t exactly go to rational places. Mine certainly didn’t. I wanted to know how long I had, what treatment would look like, whether it would work, and whether I would even get the chance to celebrate the things I had always assumed would just happen.
Now, two years have gone by, and I’ve been able to live them.
You’d think that would make August 22 easier, but in some ways, it’s more complicated. Living with MBC, another thought always creeps in: I’m another year in.
Anyone diagnosed with MBC probably knows what I mean. You see the statistics, whether you search for them or someone shows them to you. They linger in the back of your mind, and suddenly you start measuring time against them. Reaching another anniversary feels amazing, but there’s also this uneasy feeling that another year has been added to the clock.
I hate that my mind works that way. But I also know those statistics don’t tell my story, and more and more, they don’t reflect what’s really happening at all.
Over the past two years, I’ve learned how hard it is to predict outcomes in a disease where treatments are changing so fast. The numbers we see today are based on people diagnosed and treated years ago, so many of them never had access to the treatments we have now. New targeted therapies, antibody-drug conjugates, combinations, biomarkers, and technologies keep changing how doctors treat metastatic breast cancer. That makes it harder to look at old survival curves and think they show exactly how much time you have.
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to make Stage 4 cancer sound like an inspirational story. Metastatic breast cancer is still incurable. Treatments stop working. People still run out of options. We need more research, more funding, and better treatments because people are still dying from this disease.
But after two years of living with it, I’ve learned I can accept that reality without assuming I know how my own story will end.
There’s something oddly comforting about knowing that even medicine doesn’t know exactly what my future holds.
When I was first diagnosed, that uncertainty terrified me. I wanted someone to give me an answer, even though I probably wouldn’t have liked the answer they gave me. Two years later, I look at uncertainty a little differently. If researchers are developing treatments faster than long-term survival data can fully capture their impact, maybe not knowing exactly what my prognosis looks like isn’t the worst thing in the world. Maybe that uncertainty leaves room for hope.
There could be a treatment approved three years from now that I will need five years from now. There could be a clinical trial happening today that eventually changes the standard of care. Someone sitting in a lab right now could be working on something that will someday buy people like me more time. I have no way of knowing, and neither does the survival statistic that scared the hell out of me when I was first diagnosed.
That is why this anniversary feels impossible to summarize as either happy or sad.
I’m happy to be here. I’m scared because I know what I’m facing. I’m grateful for these two years I wasn’t sure I’d have, but I still want many more. I want my husband to have a birthday that isn’t overshadowed by cancer, but I know I’ll always remember where we were on August 22 when everything changed.
Maybe I don’t have to pick just one emotion.
This year, I’m going to celebrate my husband’s birthday because he deserves his day back. I’ll also quietly acknowledge what this date means to me and how much has happened since August 22, 2024.
I don’t know how many more cancer anniversaries I’ll have, but really, none of us know how many birthdays or anniversaries we’ll get. Cancer just made me realize that much sooner than I wanted.
What I do know is that I’m here for this one.
Two years later, I’m still getting treatment, still watching science move forward and hoping it continues moving fast enough that whenever I need a next option, there is one waiting for me. And if I get to keep adding years to that scary clock in my head, I’ll take every one of them.
Thanks, science.
Leave a Reply