Originally shared with friends and family on October 1, 2025. I’m bringing the updates I shared throughout treatment here to preserve my cancer story as it unfolded, and in the hope they may help someone walking a similar road.

Today I start six weeks and two days of chemoradiation.

The fight begins.

I shared YUNGBLUD’s Zombie this morning because it captured something I was having a hard time putting into words. What it feels like to lose pieces of yourself and still find a way to keep going.

That’s the story I’m stepping into.

And the ending will be stronger than the beginning.

Fuck cancer. Fuck rectal cancer.

Looking Back

Reading this now, almost a year later, I remember exactly where my head was that morning.

I knew I had Stage III rectal cancer. I knew I had six weeks and two days of chemoradiation ahead of me. I knew this was only the beginning of a much longer treatment plan.

What I didn’t know was what any of it would actually feel like.

I didn’t know what radiation would do to my body. I hadn’t experienced chemotherapy yet. Surgery still felt very far away. I didn’t know what my eventual pathology would show, what recovery would look like, or how much uncertainty would remain even after doing everything I was supposed to do.

I just knew I had to start.

There is something strange about reading my own certainty in that last sentence now:

The ending will be stronger than the beginning.

I still believe it.

I just understand “stronger” differently now.

Strength isn’t always charging into battle. Sometimes it’s getting through the next appointment. Sometimes it’s letting yourself be scared. Sometimes it’s asking the hard questions and being willing to hear the answers. Sometimes it’s accepting that there isn’t a clean ending yet and continuing to live your life anyway.

On October 1, 2025, though, none of that had happened yet.

This was Day One.

And I was ready to fight.

A Note About This Series

I’m working backward through the updates I shared privately and on social media during my treatment and bringing them here. I’m keeping them rooted in what I knew and felt at the time, rather than rewriting the story with everything I know now.

I’ll occasionally add context or a Looking Back section where I think it might be helpful.

This is my experience with rectal cancer, treatment and recovery. Every cancer and every person is different. Although I’m a former RN, nothing I share here is intended as medical advice. I’m sharing my story because when you’re standing at the beginning of something this enormous, sometimes it helps simply to know someone else has stood there too.