Yesterday at my post-post-radiation-mammogram-followup, my Rad Onc told me she was putting "Cancer-Free" in my chart. I felt a little weird about that. It sounds great, of course! But I tend to lean toward the more conservative "no evidence of disease". Cancer-free (as far as we know). No (detectable) cancer. Because really, that's as much as we can say for sure right now. It's a great thing, it's a lot and I feel very, very lucky and relieved; but how many other women have had this declaration of a clean slate and ended up recurring? At least some. I hope I will not be one of them.
Am I being too picky over details? Should I just embrace the cancer-free label? I'm in a positive frame of mind overall, and I tend to think of cancer as something I had last year. I'm not dwelling on it, and I don't have much scanxiety (or last Wednesday's mammo with repeated callbacks for closer pics of the "other" breast would have completely freaked me out) - I just have a stubbornly realistic streak. I hear "cancer-free" and I think it sounds like a promise nobody can make. It's probably true, and I intend to live happily assuming that it is until and unless there's evidence otherwise. But as they say, the only way you know for sure you've beaten cancer is when you die of something else.
