This post is part of my Cancer & Healing journal, an archive of the updates I wrote while going through treatment for Stage III rectal cancer. These entries reflect what I knew and felt at the time.

Quick little update for my people. 🤍

It’s been a hot minute.

Turns out scans and reports move at their own pace, and it is not mine.

My First Scans After Treatment

First things first.

My CT and MRI both came back very good.

I’m holding onto that with everything I’ve got.

There is a small area that still needs a closer look, but nothing alarming at this point. Just something my surgeon will want to evaluate more closely.

The MRI was done six weeks after chemotherapy, and I’m quietly stubborn in my hope that when we look again, that little spot might turn out to be scar tissue.

Fingers crossed.

Toes crossed.

Probably crossing things that shouldn’t be crossed.

I haven’t seen my surgeon yet, but Steve has an appointment with him on Tuesday and offered to give me his spot if they’ll allow it.

I’ll be calling in the morning like it’s concert tickets in the 90s, fully prepared to hit redial like my life depends on it.

Slowly Feeling Like Myself Again

As for me, I’m getting a little better every day.

I’m still dealing with some funky chemo brain, so if I forget your name mid sentence, just smile and wave.

My appetite is back to about 85 percent, and I’m slowly getting stronger.

Stairs are still humbling.

Like, who designed these, and why are there so many in a row?

My hair is also still making its dramatic exit.

It’s not super obvious to most people, but I definitely notice it. I’m hoping regrowth starts soon, so we’re trusting the process and pretending I’m entering a bold new era.

And the biggest win?

I am no longer racing to the bathroom.

I truly cannot explain the freedom in that.

Things aren’t perfect yet, but wow.

They are so much better.

Chemo was an absolute beast.

The hardest thing I’ve ever done, no question.

But here we are.

Still standing.

Still moving forward.

More to come after I talk with the surgeon.

For now, I’m staying grounded, staying hopeful and taking it one day at a time.

Thank you for all the love, prayers and support.

I feel it more than you know. 🤍

Looking Back

This was my first real experience with something I would eventually become very familiar with:

waiting for cancer to declare itself.

Treatment was finished.

The scans were encouraging.

There was no obvious metastatic disease.

But there was that small area.

Maybe residual tumor.

Maybe treatment effect.

Maybe scar tissue.

Maybe something that would continue changing as my body recovered.

I didn’t know.

And that word, maybe, occupies an enormous amount of space in cancer.

Before cancer, I thought test results mostly produced answers.

Cancer taught me that sometimes they produce better questions.

Still, I was hopeful.

And I had good reasons to be.

I had completed chemoradiation and seven rounds of FOLFOX. My recent Signatera had been negative. My CEA had been normal. My CT and MRI hadn’t revealed distant metastatic disease.

So I let myself imagine that the remaining area might simply be scar tissue.

Again, I’m glad I did.

What I Didn’t Know Yet

With hindsight, this is one of those entries where I can see myself standing at a fork in the road without knowing it.

That small area wouldn’t disappear.

A later MRI would still show an area concerning for viable tumor in the tumor bed.

Eventually I would have surgery.

And pathology would show that despite everything treatment had accomplished, there was still cancer there.

But none of that information existed for me on April 12.

That’s important.

Because when we tell cancer stories backward, everything starts looking inevitable.

It wasn’t.

Every scan changed the possibilities.

Every result changed the conversation.

Every appointment gave us another piece of information.

On April 12, there were still several possible explanations for what we were seeing.

Scar tissue was one of them.

And I desperately wanted it to be the right one.

Meanwhile, My Body Was Coming Back

Something else gets overshadowed when I look back at the scan now.

I was getting better.

My appetite was returning.

My strength was slowly coming back.

The bowel urgency that had controlled so much of my life through radiation and chemotherapy was finally easing.

After months of knowing exactly where every bathroom was, not having to race to one felt like freedom.

Those weren’t insignificant things.

Cancer treatment had occupied my body for months.

And now, little by little, I was beginning to recognize myself again.

Not completely.

Not yet.

But enough to notice.

The scans still needed answers.

The surgeon still needed to weigh in.

There was more road ahead.

But on April 12, I was six weeks out from chemotherapy, getting stronger and holding tightly to hope.

That was enough information for one day.