Officially cancer free!

 I didn't want to make anyone wade through a post to get to the big news. I saw my oncologist today, the surgery was successful, they got everything, and I'm officially cancer free!

I will still be doing radiation, I'll still get my ovaries out, I'll still be on hormone therapy for years to come, but I'm feeling good.

Surgery recovery update: I get a little less sore every day. My range of motion is still a bit limited, and I've got cording in my right arm. I saw my occupational therapist today, she's confident I'll be where I need to be to start radiation in a few weeks (I do not know when I'm officially starting radiation, but my consult is in early January), and we're going to be working on the cording between now and then. This involves a very gentle massage to loosen up the cords, and I'm still taking it pretty easy. Very gentle, limited stretches, shoulder rolls, just making sure the right shoulder (which is the tightest and sorest) doesn't freeze. 

I'm feeling better than I've felt in months and months. Maybe since my initial mammogram. It's really great. And I stopped by the infusion center (everything is in the same hospital) to share the good news with the team that helped me through chemo. Just a great day. 

Edited 1/15/26 to add: I didn't include this at the time but finding out that I had to have another surgery (for ovaries) and get an infusion for three years REALLY bummed me out. It just felt like finding out that there was a whole wing of a building that I hadn't known about that I now had to navigate. They don't tell you all the things you'll have to do at the very beginning so they don't overwhelm you, I guess? Or maybe things might change depend on how your treatment goes. But it felt devastating in the moment to have more things added on to all of the things I was already prepared to do. It was fine, ultimately! But that moment of "are you kidding me? more? I have to do even more?" was hard. So hard that I think I just left it out of the blog because it was too upsetting to be honest about at the time.