This stage 4 cancer vlog is a celebratory one, a culmination of many others that have documented my journey as a young adult stage 4 cancer patient.

Here's something I wrote about it earlier today:

Today, I’m exactly one year into remission from cancer.

Again.

It turns out that it wasn’t illegal to get cancer twice as I purported between 2019-2023 during my first remission from stage a stage 3c melanoma diagnosis.

But now that I’m in remission from a stage 4 recurrence, I’m POSITIVE that it’s illegal to get cancer a third time.😬

Ironically, I call cancer treatment ‘jail’ but had never associated the two jokes until this moment.

When my oncologist walked in the room last February, this was our initial exchange:

“Back to jail?”

“Back to jail.”

So in the most figurative sense, too, it is illegal to get cancer three times in my book.

But I’ve also never been much of a rule follower, unfortunately.

I think that’s why I’m approaching this remission anniversary differently than the first time I made it to a year. At my first year of remission in 2020, I partied like I had just won the Super Bowl. It felt like I had put a bad nightmare behind me – and I almost did.

At this point in time, I am guaranteed to have spent all of my 30’s as a cancer patient (whether in active treatment or monitoring).

I’ve had cancer for over 1/3 of my adult life.

I no longer have the option of pretending like cancer is just going to be a blip. But this isn’t lamenting the hand I’m dealt, because cancer hasn’t fully consumed my life, either – in fact, most of its presence in my existence is self-inflicted at this point.

(I guess it’s all technically self-inflicted) 🤷🏻‍♂️

But that existence is once again a one-year NED one.

This time the energy is different and I can’t tell if I’m stoic, pensive, or just too used to it now. Am I sad, hopeful, or have I just been here before?

I think it might be all of those things.

I write and talk a lot about cancer these days.

Physical health, mental health, emotional health, lifestyle impacts – I’m basically live journaling a guide on how to deal with cancer in one particular style. (That being said, it’s somewhat the style of a lunatic man-child; I’m not sure I’d recommend it unilaterally)

The fact that I can’t pinpoint where I’m at emotionally is actually a positive to me today. Because that means I’m not overthinking it, and I’m present.

Scrutinizing your emotions constantly in order to provide a label isn’t healthy, but when you are trying to fix your mental health, you do it a lot.

The fact that I’m ok with an array of possible emotions that have led me to a certain behavior -- in this case being reserved on my cancerversary vs. overtly excited -- will let me experience this day more organically than if I forced myself to be giddy the same way I was during my first remission.

Who knows; the day is young. I'm proud that I still feel as though I am, too.

If cancer has taught me anything, it’s that uncertainty is always lurking more than I had previously accounted for – and again, this is coming from a self-labeled arbiter of chaos.

But uncertainty doesn’t solely mean bad.

Uncertainty means I’m not sure whether this remission will be durable, or whether my mental health, finances, and social structures will rebound. But wild success is also included within the range of outcomes in ‘not sure’.

I have to remind myself of the possible upside even as I stare it in the face presently.

Being an arbiter of chaos has historically been kind to me, so today I’ll revel in both my present good health and the future uncertainty that is afforded by it.