Maybe I’m still alive.
Today is a kind of milestone – five years ago today, I had surgery to remove my tumor.
My final check-up at the cancer hospital is coming up in about 2 weeks’ time – it was originally scheduled for today, in fact, but they had to move it for some reason. After my check up, this time, the hospital releases me from “monitoring” (ie. the scheduled semi-annual CAT scans, mostly) under the assumption that any metastasis is unlikely at this point.
Thus, any cancer I get, from here forward, is presumed to be “new” in some sense, I guess. Not that it really works that way. The current understanding is that we all have cancer, all the time. But mostly, our immune systems in all their guises keep it in check. So getting sick with cancer is mostly a failure of some aspect of the immune system.
[daily log: walking, 8km; carrying heavy box to post office, 0.5km]