The After, Continued: Life After Cancer Treatment

Part of the After series

In December, I wrote about the quiet that comes after treatment ends. About the waiting, the processing, and the strange suspension that follows when the medical urgency fades but life does not immediately resume. This post lives in that same space. The life after cancer treatment

Active treatment ended, but treatment did not.It simply changed shape.

I am now on hormonal blockage, a long-term therapy that will likely stay with me for at least five years. It does not announce itself loudly. There are no infusion chairs, no countdown calendars. It settles into daily life quietly and persistently, asking for adjustment rather than short bursts of endurance.

If active treatment felt like a sprint through emergencies and decisions, this phase feels much closer to a marathon.

Hormonal blockage is not dramatic, but it is demanding. It reshapes the body in subtle ways. Energy fluctuates. Sleep changes. Joints complain. Temperature shifts without warning. Some days feel familiar. Others feel foreign. There is no single moment to point to and say, this is the hard part. Instead, there is the accumulation of small adaptations, day after day.

And that accumulation is its own kind of work.

During treatment, the mission is clear: get through this. Now, the task is quieter and less defined. Learn how to live well while carrying something that is not going away anytime soon. Learn how to pace yourself when the finish line is intentionally far away.

When the noise of appointments and procedures fades, space opens up. And in that space, thoughts rush in. Fear does not disappear. It changes volume. It becomes softer, more persistent. It shows up in ordinary moments, when there is no distraction to drown it out.

The waiting looks different now, but it never fully disappeared.

This is where the marathon analogy feels most true. Anyone who has run long distances knows that the hardest miles are not always the loud ones. They are the steady ones. The miles where discipline matters more than adrenaline. Where progress depends on rhythm, not speed. Where the work is not about pushing harder, but about continuing wisely.

Running has become my anchor in this stage. Not as an escape, but as a framework. A reminder that long journeys are built on consistency, not heroics. That showing up matters more than how it looks.

I am deliberately focusing this phase on rebuilding a sense of normality. Not the old normal, but a functional one. A life that includes training plans, early mornings, tired legs, and goals that stretch beyond medical timelines. I recently registered for my first major marathon, New York City. It felt significant not because it proves anything, but because it points forward.

Training while on hormonal treatment is an exercise in humility. Some days the body responds. Some days it resists. The lesson is not to conquer it, but to collaborate with it. To trust that progress still happens, even when it looks different than before.

This phase is teaching me that resilience does not always look like strength. Sometimes it looks like adjustment. Like choosing to keep moving, even when the pace has changed. Like accepting that this is a long race, and treating it accordingly.

I am still in the after. The same after I wrote about in December, just further down the course.

There is no finish line in sight yet, and that is okay. I am learning how to run long. How to live fully inside a body that has been changed, without letting that change be the only story it tells.

Steady. Intentional. Forward.