Don’t Worry, I’m Seeing a Therapist - August 28, 2026

Hi friends and family and happy end of summer! I owe you all an apology for the gap in updates. It’s been a while, and while in most cases no news is good news, sometimes prolonged quiet can get spooky around here. I’m sorry if I made you worry.

A lot has happened since my last update. The biggest thing: I finished active treatment. How I managed to skate past 15 sessions of radiation with zero complications is beyond me, the complications magnet. The last day was July 21, and at the time, I don’t know if it really hit me that…yeah. That’s it. That’s the end of active treatment. It was me, my dear mentor, and my two techs watching me ring the bell. For something that should have felt momentous, it was pretty mundane. After everything—chemo, surgery, the absolute nightmare that was recovery, and everything in between—getting to ring that particular bell/finish that last treatment felt more like the logical thing to have happen, if that makes sense.

I’ve officially moved into the maintenance phase of treatment. I started Letrozole on August 15 to shut off the very little estrogen production in my adrenal glands. Kisqali, another pill, is a CK inhibitor. In short terms, it turns off the mechanism that allows cancer cells to grow. I start that mid-September. The last piece is an infusion of Zometa every six months—the idea behind that is to ward off whatever cancer cells are left, if there are any, from latching onto my bones.

It sounds like a lot because it is. I am going to be completely honest and say I am just flat-out exhausted at this point. I was tired of being sick and in pain even before all this happened. Feeling like a sack of badly sewn together human remains every second of every day is extremely demoralizing and isolating. I live on Cape Cod and I couldn’t make it to the beach more than once between the sun sensitivity and the fact that I am so exhausted I cannot make a meal for myself after a few hours with friends or a shift at the tattoo shop. I know I am judging myself based on a version of my body that is still recovering from late-stage cancer, one of the worst chemo regimens known to science, and post-op complications my doctors didn’t know were even possible. I have been so unwell for so long that I genuinely do not know if it will ever get better. Things have only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. None of this feels particularly reassuring. That’s why when people say “you’re such a fighter! You’re so strong!” the urge to disagree is overwhelming. In reality, I do not have any other option other than just dealing with it. That’s not bravery. That’s just the way it is. 

Watching everyone else out there make massive moves for themselves—getting promoted, traveling, buying a house, marrying and starting families, etc—while you are struggling to literally find a way to get up and get dressed in the morning without passing out or puking, fully knowing you will never have the normalcy they take for granted, is just…so, so, so unfair. I’ve learned you can be genuinely happy for someone while absolutely resenting every fiber of their being and seething with the type of jealousy the DSM-5 would deem diagnostic criteria for something. I didn’t need some big come-to-Jesus moment to change my ways. That came and went years ago. It sounds silly but I am terrified of booking a plane ticket, or registering for a course, or just doing anything to improve my quality of life because life has taught me it will blow up in the most painful and ridiculous way possible. I am truly paralyzed by fear and burnout. This manifests as me resenting my friends and loved ones, and even random people, to an irrational, borderline-hatred level for no real reason. Then I feel guilty. Then I get mad at myself. And then the cycle continues. You know it’s bad when I, the Queen of Deflection, can’t dark-joke my way out of how this feels. 

I don’t say this to evoke a reaction or have you worry any more than you already do. This is 100% honesty as I slowly come to terms with just how bad this was (and how much worse it should have been), how lucky I am to even be alive and how deeply I am affected by all of it. I haven’t been talking to anyone because I really do not know how to go about saying any of this, or just going about having a normal conversation…and that is why I have had like 36 unread texts for about 4 months now. It’s quite the rock and hard place to be stuck between. Again, I am sorry if I ghosted you. It is entirely unintentional and I love and miss you too. 

For the first time in almost a year, there isn’t a next round of chemo or surgery or radiation staring me in the face. Figuring out what to do with that is going to be its own kind of work. For now, even if I never fully learn how, I’m going to try to give myself permission to recover without demanding that I immediately become the person I was before all of this. (I say this as I am actively pissed that I’m not the person I used to be. Sigh.) But…I DO want to travel. I DO want to go back to school. I want to make plans without immediately assuming a shoe of equal or greater net value isn’t going to drop right on my f*cking head. I want to spend more time outside. I want to write again. I want to make things. I want my spine to STOP EATING ITSELF. I want to have things to look forward to that have absolutely nothing to do with cancer or pain or chronic illness, if at all possible at this point. I just hope one day I will look back on this chapter of my life and find some sort of peace in it. Maybe one day I’ll forget it even happened. Maybe the echoes of the bombs dropping will become a whisper. Maybe I won’t feel like the elephant in every room, whether I’m in it or not. I can really only hope. So that’s what I’ll do.

Thanks for refusing to let me disappear into the void, no matter how badly I want to. I will continue to send these updates out, but not as often—if there’s anything good that has come from this situation, it’s how hard all of you have rallied for me. I seriously want to make you proud one day!

All my love, and there’s still somehow a lot of that,

Caroline