Writers need their words. We can’t be architects of a story without them. But once in a great while, numbers can speak too. They can paint a picture in a new way, offering the chance to break through to the reader in ways that words cannot. Sometimes numbers just pop.
I decided after looking at some recent news through this very lens that I would present a facet of a story, familiar here to readers, through numbers instead.
I’ll start with the number 5. My doctor told me last week that I have hit the 5-year milestone since my cancer diagnosis. In the cancer universe, this means that I have reached a marker where the risk of recurrence is significantly reduced. It also means that I only need to see both my medical oncologist and the surgeon’s nurse practitioner once a year now. It’s kind of a big step.
And after 5? The rest of the numbers are below. You may immediately wonder, “how did she calculate them?” It was actually easy, given that I am one to save my calendars well past their expiration date. (Yes, I still use paper calendars!) In no particular order, the numbers describe much of how I spent my time over the last 5 years.
Hearing stage 3 endometrial cancer.
2 surgeries–a hysterectomy and implanting a port-a-cath into a vein for easy infusions of any kind.
9 months before I completed treatment.
21 appointments with my medical oncologist. (blood/chemo)
18 appointments with the nurse practitioner for exams
29 blood draws
6 rounds of chemotherapy with 2 different drugs given on the same day in 2 sets of 3–one set in the winter and the other in the summer.
2 allergic reactions to Paclitaxel (a chemo drug.)
12 appointments with radiology oncologists.
1 mapping scan to determine the trajectories of the multiple radiation beams.
2 tiny tattoo dots added prior to radiation treatment (so the technicians knew exactly where to position me on the table).
25 days of external radiation.
4 days of brachytherapy (internal radiation) treatment (using nuclear medicine.)
11 pounds lost in 3 weeks from side effects of radiation.
Finding 1 wig and 4 headscarves.
2 endometrial biopsies.
1 cystoscopy.
1 chest x-ray.
2 stat kidney flushes (2 saline bags) and 2 appointments with a nephrologist after my kidneys started to fail.
6 oncology nurses in the infusion suite. They all helped during my 5–6-hour days there.
8 CT scans.
880 days living with a port under my skin near my left clavicle.
15 port flushes (this is a “cleansing” using heparin. It is necessary to prevent the port from clogging up. I returned to the suite every 5 weeks to flush it well after treatment was over. We needed to be a “go” if anything suspicious was found.)
1 port removal procedure.
6 months before my hair started to grow back. Twice.
And 1 loud, fist-pumping “hallelujah!” blaring inside my head as I walked back to the car last week.
Am I crazy to relive it this way? Not really. First, I remember most of it, anyway. Plus, I am proud of the strength I needed to use, and find, for some of it. I’ve absorbed it and it’s just a piece of my identity now.
And what felt like a ton of numbers, I can see now that the sum equals one. And that’s because it is one journey; one journey amongst one million. 10 million. Even more.
So, all of us celebrate that 60-month marker. We appreciate that the number 5 is based on science and its studies of recurrence. But for many of us, we are equally celebrating the gift of time.
And that is what I figured out after doing this collective math. These numbers broke it down for me, showing me how much a journey like this robs us of time, SO much time, for both the patient and the caregivers who love us. But that was the path.
I’ve gone from weekly to monthly to every 3 months and so on, but it is still a shock to see only two oncology appointments in 2025. There are no scheduled scans. There won’t be any chance of a pop-up x-ray or procedure referral after a scheduled appointment “just to be sure.” That has definitely happened.
The result is that I’m looking at wide open spaces on my calendar. I feel like I can gallop through the squares and days on that calendar untethered. And man, does that feel good.
Leavingthedooropen.com 
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