​I’m the friend Nicole referred to in this blog post, the one who learned of a likely recurrence right before my 4th surgeversary.

I was diagnosed April 1, 2020, and celebrate that each year with cake because that’s a clear anniversary of a day something happened. On March 31, I didn’t know I had cancer. On April 1, I did. Some people say they celebrate the day they found out they had cancer because that’s the day their lives were saved.

As I’ve ticked off the number of years I had no evidence of disease (NED), I used the anniversary of my surgery, June 22, 2020. That was the day all my tumors were removed, but I didn’t really know I was NED until CT scans months later showed no signs of cancer.

On June 19, 2024, my CT scan showed a 17 mm ovoid mass near my bladder, described by the radiologist as “highly concerning for metastatic disease.”

So I couldn’t very well celebrate being 4 years NED, could I? 

For me, this is a solid argument for celebrating (or commemorating, if the word celebrating feels inappropriate) the date of diagnosis. That date won’t change.

I had all my reproductive organs removed. How is a recurrence possible?

I’m not that surprised by what I’ve started calling “my little recurrence.” More than 80% of people with low-grade serous ovarian cancer experience a recurrence. I tempted fate by ceasing to take an aromatase inhibitor to block the production of estrogen. This is the standard of care for LGSOC treatment, but I was experiencing unbearable hand pain as a side effect. After discussing it with my doctor, I stopped taking the hormone blocker Letrozole.

As soon as I got my CT results, I restarted taking Letrozole, and the plan is to rescan in three months to see if it has any effect on my little recurrence. If there’s anything left to remove, I’ll have another surgery. Once that’s done, I hope to restart my NED clock. I’ll have a new surgeversary to count my years without visible cancer.

Living with Uncertainty

​In addition to wondering whether to celebrate some kind of cancerversary, people with ovarian cancer also struggle with whether to call themselves survivors, or even whether to say “I have ovarian cancer,” or “I had ovarian cancer.”

During the time I had no visible disease, I took to using the phrase, "Life after LGSOC," to describe my situation in my social media bios. In the days following my CT scan report, I revised them to "Living with LGSOC." Many of us feel like we always will be living with the disease, even when we have no sign of it.

Last year's survey of people with LGSOC found that most of us consider living with the uncertainty of a recurrence is one of the biggest challenges we face.

Which brings me back to cake. Whether you take inspiration from The Cancer Patient's Hall of Fame cakes and have a sheet cake decorated with a quip like "Not dead yet," or "Good job not dying," or whether you buy yourself a cupcake when you remember, "Oh yeah, today is the anniversary of my second chemotherapy," as far as I'm concerned, there's never a bad time to celebrate with cake.