Year five- I love you, I hate you.

This coming week marks five years since the amputation surgery that left me cancer-free. In the cancer world, five years is a major milestone. It's when your chance of recurrence drastically drops, and your doctor tells you that statistically, you should be free from this type of cancer forever. But for me, a statistical anomaly, having been diagnosed with an incredibly rare sub-type of osteosarcoma that wasn't supposed to happen, let alone come back, but indeed did, that wasn't the case. Because as I was toasting, cancer was once again growing in my body and cruelly mimicking new bone in my scans. So rude.

I hate that instead of breathing a real sigh of relief, I have to wonder if this will happen to me all over again. I hate that my body is so forever changed and shaped by cancer that I will never be able to pretend it didn't happen when I look in the mirror, and I hate that as much as I have moved forward with my life a hint of fear will always haunt me because I was the exception to the rule. Not in the way the bad boy finally changes his ways for the girl against all odds, but in the way the bad thing that isn't supposed to happen does happen. This isn't what I meant when I said I wanted to be special.

For all the things I've hated over the last 5+ years, it's the things I've loved that keep me going. It's my people. The ones who have proven to be my strength when I couldn't find my own. It's the opportunities I allowed myself to accept even when I was scared. It's this blog, the new friends I've made, the self-love I've gained. My prosthetic leg, Kiki, is now a frequent flyer. She's been to so many places with me, I've lost count, and I feel blessed to have her by my side while I hike, dance, and walk across medieval cobblestones. She truly is my homegirl despite the disagreements we occasionally have over battery life and valve pressure.

As this year comes to a close and another year of this post-cancer journey begins, I am happy to have clean scans and a happy heart. And despite all the noise telling me there is no promise things will stay that way, I'm just going to keep hiking and dancing and walking on medieval cobblestones. I'm going to keep putting stamps in my passport and fighting with Kiki from time to time. I'll only keep getting better and better at this one-leg thing so I can continue to share all the thrilling escapades I find myself in.

Thank you to anyone who has ever taken a moment to read the words I write on this page. May they give you at least a sliver of the healing and joy it gave me writing them over the last five years.