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.

Today I received a gift I wasn’t expecting.

After reviewing my labs and my Signatera results, my oncologist told me I do not need my eighth round of FOLFOX.

That means I am officially finished with chemotherapy.

Seven rounds. Done.

Four months ago, this journey felt overwhelming and uncertain.

Today, I am walking away from treatment with deep gratitude for the incredible medical team who cared for me, for the science and medicine that made this possible, and for the many friends and family who prayed for me, encouraged me and carried me through some very hard days.

What Happens Next

The next step will be scans and additional testing to see exactly how the tumor has responded to treatment.

After that, we’ll have discussions about surgery and the best path forward.

But those decisions aren’t for today.

For now, I’m focusing on healing.

Resting.

Getting my strength back.

Getting my appetite back.

And letting my body begin recovering after months of treatment.

Cancer has a way of changing how you see life.

It reminds you how precious each day is and how much love surrounds us when we allow people to walk beside us.

I am incredibly thankful today.

And if you’re 45 or older, please schedule your colorectal cancer screening.

Don’t put it off.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way.

I have felt it every step of this journey. ❤️

Looking Back

I remember the surprise of this day.

Four days earlier, I had written that I had one more FOLFOX infusion to go.

In my head, I was doing eight.

Then my oncologist looked at everything in front of him and told me I was done.

Seven was it.

And after months of organizing my life around treatment, suddenly there wasn’t another infusion on the calendar.

There’s something strange about finishing cancer treatment.

You spend months counting toward the end.

Then someone finally tells you you’ve reached it, and the world doesn’t suddenly transform.

You’re still tired.

You’re still weak.

Your body is still carrying everything treatment did to it.

And cancer doesn’t disappear from your thoughts just because the infusion schedule disappears from your calendar.

But that day?

I wasn’t interested in borrowing trouble from the future.

My Signatera was negative.

My CEA was normal.

My oncologist was comfortable stopping FOLFOX after seven cycles.

I had completed chemoradiation and systemic chemotherapy.

Those were the facts I had on March 9.

So I let myself be happy.

I’m glad I did.

The Strange Thing About Looking Back

I know considerably more now than I knew when I wrote this.

I know that treatment hadn’t eliminated all of the cancer.

I know there would still be viable tumor found later.

I know surgery would become necessary.

I know what the pathology would eventually show.

And I know that the word finished would become much more complicated than it felt on March 9.

But I don’t want to place any of that at the beginning of this story.

Because that’s not how cancer is lived.

We experience it one result at a time.

One scan.

One blood draw.

One pathology report.

One decision.

One piece of good news.

One piece of bad news.

And all we can really do is respond to the information we have in front of us.

On March 9, I had good news.

I was finished with chemotherapy.

Whatever came next could wait until it actually arrived.

And Then, Recovery

For the first time since October, there was no next treatment waiting for me.

That felt enormous.

I wanted my appetite back.

I wanted my muscles back.

I wanted my brain back.

I wanted to work.

I wanted to leave my bedroom.

I wanted ordinary life.

There were scans and decisions waiting somewhere ahead.

But first, my body needed something it hadn’t been given in a very long time.

Time to heal.