Complete Response and Cancer Free!
The girls hugged Julie after hearing the good news.
By John Bach
The two words we’ve ached to hear since Julie’s cancer diagnosis last summer finally came today: CANCER FREE.
Imaging revealed last month that her breast cancer responded incredibly well to chemotherapy, but doctors were quick to caution that we wouldn’t know for sure if she was cancer free until after her mastectomy. Until after examining everything on a cellular level.
That call came this afternoon. Six days after her surgery, UC Health surgeon Alicia Heelan called Julie to check up on her and to share the news.
“Is now a good time to discuss your pathology results?” she asked, her voice now on speaker. Julie immediately started to cry and assumed it was bad. “I don’t have anything but good news for you. It was a complete response. The cancer is gone. You are cancer free.”
Julie, standing in our bedroom, cried harder. I exhaled and breathed deeply for what seemed like the first time in seven months.
The sheer trauma of this experience is hard to articulate. From the months of chemo to last week’s double mastectomy, Julie has been through hell. Don’t get me wrong, her care has been amazing. She’s been in incredible hands — from the doctors to the nurses to all the technicians — but those hands had to go to barbaric lengths to save her life. That’s the current reality of breast cancer. And it has advanced lightyears in the modern era.
There’s a lot of healing and a series of surgeries in her future still, but none of that erases a single bit of the joy that accompanies hearing the words “cancer free.”
To my wife, I’m so incredibly proud of you, and I love you! To everyone who has prayed for her and stepped into our lives in such amazing ways, thank you.
