Survivorship Is Not the Victory Lap I Expected
I thought finishing treatment would feel like crossing a finish line. Confetti. Relief. Instead, survivorship feels more like someone turned off the hospital lights, handed me a discharge packet, and said, “Alright champ, you’re good now. Go be normal.”
When you’re in treatment, your life has structure. Appointments. Labs. Infusions. Scans. Your calendar revolves around survival. You are under a microscope. Monitored. Measured. Managed.
Then one day, it ends.
The Quiet Weight of Survivorship
Survivorship is strange. There’s relief, of course. Gratitude. A deep awareness that you are still here. But layered underneath that is something no one really prepares you for.
When you’re the one who made it through, especially when others don’t, there’s a heaviness that follows you. When someone says, “You’re lucky to be alive,” they aren’t wrong, but luck doesn’t feel like the right word.
Once cancer has lived in your body, every ache feels suspicious. Every headache makes you pause. Every weird pain sends a ripple of fear through your spine. And then there’s the emptiness. For a year, I lived in fight mode. My routine was treatment. My identity was patient. My body was constantly being evaluated. When the appointments slowed down and the urgency faded, it left space. Space for my brain to process everything I had just survived.
It’s a strange mix of gratitude and grief, relief and anxiety. You are different now, but the world expects you to slide right back into your old life like nothing happened. Survivorship isn’t a victory lap. It’s learning how to live in a body that once tried to kill you.
When Treatment Ends… But the Issues Don’t
As if navigating the emotional side of survivorship wasn’t enough, my body decided it had one more plot twist. If you read my blogs toward the end of treatment, you might remember me complaining about my gums. Swollen, inflamed, and sore; I couldn’t eat or brush my teeth without bleeding and discomfort. I assumed once immunotherapy ended, it would settle down… It didn’t.
What followed was one of the most frustrating and expensive medical scavenger hunts of my life. I was punted from provider to provider. Dentist, oral surgeon, rheumatologists, allergists, etc. Everyone had theories, but no one had answers.
Eventually, after many visits that eventually called for lab work, I was diagnosed with Plasma-Cell Gingivitis — an incredibly rare, idiopathic allergic reaction. In plain English: my immune system reset itself during immunotherapy and apparently decided to create a brand-new allergy. Because why not.
I finally found a University of Michigan–trained allergist willing to try. There is no cure, but we’ve identified a treatment plan that keeps symptoms at bay.
But here’s the part that needs to be said out loud… Priority Health has refused to cover the lab services that finally led to my diagnosis because of formality and red tape. There is zero flexibility for a condition that has no standard of care. I have been in an ongoing appeal process (approaching a year) over medically necessary testing ordered by specialists, trying to determine why my gums looked like they were staging a coup.
We talk a lot about the healthcare system being broken. From my perspective, the providers have been trying. Insurance is where things derail. Requiring patients to try cheaper, less effective options before approving proper diagnostics and treatments doesn’t save people. It delays healing. It prolongs pain. It creates unnecessary stress. Normally, I wouldn’t publicly call out a local company. But this matters. Because patients should not have to fight their insurance company while trying to feel normal again.
And here’s the kicker — this year of survivorship has cost me more out of pocket than my year actively treating cancer.
Losing Regina
This past year, I hosted the first official One Tough Titty golf outing to benefit Regina Hill — a woman I met during my own breast cancer journey.
She inspired me when I needed it most. We were both marketers, both fighters, and both navigating something we never asked for. Through this community, we were able to gift her over $10,000.
Earlier this month, Regina lost her second battle with breast cancer. Her passing hit differently. Not just because I cared about her, but because it reinforced a hard truth about survivorship: “no evidence of disease” does not mean permanent safety. Once you’ve had cancer, that awareness never fully leaves you.
Her loss has been hard to process, but it has also strengthened my resolve. Because while we can’t always control outcomes, we can control how someone experiences their fight. We can reduce the burden. We can show up. We can stand in the gap when the system doesn’t.
Moving Forward
This year’s Fore the Fight golf outing is scheduled for Monday, August 31, and we are currently looking for 2026’s Tough Titty. If you know a woman navigating a breast cancer diagnosis who could use support, please nominate her.
Cancer reshaped my priorities in ways I’m still uncovering. It stripped away what felt urgent but wasn’t, and clarified what truly matters. It also sharpened my sense of purpose. When you walk that close to the edge, you either shrink back from life or you lean in more intentionally. I’ve chosen to lean in.
There are many things I don’t control. I don’t control what my immune system decides to do next. I don’t control how insurance companies make their decisions. I don’t control what the future holds or how long any of us get in this body. But I do control what I choose to build with the time and energy I have.
And what I’m choosing to build is something that helps women feel less alone in the middle of their fight. Something that eases even a small portion of the financial and emotional burden that comes with a breast cancer diagnosis. Something that turns my experience into impact.
Survivorship may not look like the triumphant movie ending I once imagined. It is messier, more layered, and more honest than that. But I am still here. And for now, that is enough.