April 15 doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to you, if you live in the United States. (Actually, April 15 doesn’t mean much to anyone this year, because taxes aren’t due today.)

April 15, 2015, was the day my lungs were proclaimed NED, less than six months after my treatment with immunotherapy (treatment aborted halfway through due to extreme side effects).

I was too tired to be really happy that day, because, as I was to learn 24 hours later, when I started having trouble finding words, my brain was full of tumors.

So, today and tomorrow are the anniversary of the most head-spinning reversal of fortune of my life. I don’t really know how you commemorate something like this, other than acknowledging it happened, and hoping like hell it doesn’t happen again. 

That I don’t lie awake for hours every night worrying it might happen again is a testament to my constitutional lack of foresight, to my insistence on living in the now. I always thought that was a liability, until I got cancer. Now, it turns out, that may be one of my superpowers.

(My next scans day is May 22.)

Edited to add: Here is something to help you if you have a constitutional lack of (John) Forsythe.