It Never Goes Away

I learned a word this week. Want to know what it was? Propitious. It means favorable, or something indicating a good chance of success; in other words, it means a good omen. We don’t get a lot of things that seem propitious when it comes to cancer. For me, the propitious events just feel plain old *weird*. You see, I have a chronic leukemia. Not just your everyday chronic leukemia, but both subtypes of a one in five million chronic leukemia. I’ve had cancer for ten years as of May 18th, 2025, and my journey has been a bit bumpy, to say the least. I started my first treatment, a weekly pill called methotrexate on May 28th, 2015, and stopped it on June 2nd, 2017 (I was having bad side effects). I started my second line treatment, a daily pill called cyclophosphamide on February 14th, 2020 (I guess cancer was my Valentine that year?) and stopped it June 24th, 2020 (I didn’t respond). I started my third line treatment, methotrexate again – but injected into my thigh this time (yay! Everyone loves needles, right?) on April 28th, 2021, and stopped it July 7th, 2021 (I failed it). On August 14th, 2021, I started a clinical trial. I started taking the drug, ruxolitinib (four of them!), twice daily.

Now, a clinical trial, that doesn’t sound very propitious, does it? It doesn’t – those two words put together “clinical” and “trial” can have negative and scary connotations, understandably so. However, for me, it has worked wonders. It confuses the hell out of some of my doctors, mostly due to the fact that I was responding decently to it…when all of a sudden in cycle 18 (So, December 2022 or so?), my counts skyrocketed (in a good way)! It weirded the hell out of me and for months, I was thinking “Okay, so this isn’t consistently improved yet, something must be wrong. Am I sick and I don’t know it? Do I have COVID, and I am asymptomatic? What is going on?!” The other shoe didn’t drop (or at least it hasn’t yet), as of cycle 44.

Cancer sticks with you. Even though my counts are normal, I still get blood drawn every 28 days – it’s part of the requirements for the clinical trial, so they can track how the participants are doing. Every third cycle, I go into NYC to see my managing oncologist and the clinical trial team to get poked and prodded and questioned so they can see how I am doing (I’m normal, *my* normal, is my traditional response). I’ve been told that once the trial ends, they should be able to get insurance to cover the ruxo, due to my “robust” response. We’re a decade in, so it’s time to buckle that seatbelt and get ready for decades more. We’re in this for the long haul.

Cancer also sticks with me through my cancer friends, we all have our own experiences. Some of us have put active treatment in the rearview mirror, others are still going through it. However, if you are in a room with young adults with cancer, you will quickly learn that cancer never goes away. We all have something in our minds that will bring us back to those low moments, be it having that hospital smell set you off or hearing the name of one of your drugs sending a shiver down your spine.

I know that cancer will always be with me. Mostly because it’s in the first word of the full name of mine: chronic. Also, because it has irrevocably changed my path in life. I have met people that I would’ve never met otherwise, and I have done things that I never would’ve done without encountering the beast that cancer is. It has pushed me far out of my comfort zone (…I’m still not used to needles, even after 250+ blood draws in close to 10 years). As strange as it sounds, in a few ways it has bettered my life. Now, I am not saying that cancer is a great thing or that I’m inspiration porn; I am saying that due to it I have been led on an unexpected path: that of an author. Over a decade ago I was told that the path I was on, that of someone going into teaching elementary school, would “not be mentally stimulating enough for me” and that if I “were to do that” I would need to do something on the side to help stimulate my mind; he suggested that I write. At the time I was thinking, “uhhh, me? An author? No way!” Apparently a little over 5 years into cancer, my brain decided it was going to take that piece of advice and start writing after seeing a prompt on the Elephants and Tea website. I started with a great topic: writing a letter to my cancer. I told it how rude it was for giving me so much grief.

Some like to shed cancer like a snake sheds its skin. They push it out of their minds as much as they can and stay in touch over social media updates. For me, I decided to incorporate it into myself. I have used the knowledge I have gained to help others in their journey, especially those who are starting their time with a chronic cancer. I can show them that even when they have a chronic cancer, sometimes you get a little medication vacation; you still have anxiety during those vacations, you worry when you have blood drawn that the next draw will show that you need to start up treatment again, but you might not have to. You might get a reprieve of another blood draw before you need treatment again. When you do, smile. Relax. Share the good news with your friends and have a little celebration, even if it is just a quick “Hell yeah, go me, my blood is behaving!” Seize the good times, look at those good moments, look at those glimmers, and see them for what they are: they are good omens, they are propitious.