Are we prepared for a steep climb or a descent? The answer is Yes.

Thanks to all of you for being here in calendar year 2016. It was a year with fewer chills, spills and thrills in terms of my health, for which I’m grateful.

It was, for me, a year to grow into the Big Girl Pants of longer-term grappling with the thing called Survivorship. Learning its contours and its limitations. Learning what my diagnosis does — and does not — excuse. Learning that the giant sword has definitively come to rest above my head, and I can choose to spend my time staring at it and fearing its final blow, or… not. I will keep choosing not.

If you are a fellow cancer traveler, I wish you good, speedy health, and treatment side effects people have actually heard of before.

If you love someone with cancer, keep showing them — and yourself — abundant love.

If cancer has never touched your life, I hope your luck continues infinitely. I know I’ve made it sound like a lot of fun, but it actually isn’t. But thanks for reading a cancer blog all the same.

To the memory of the beautiful — and sometimes far too young — people we lost this year: I will never forget you.

Happy new year!