I went back to the Cancer Centre on my birthday. It’s what had to be done. I wore my sparkly party dress. I hadn’t worn it before, who knew I was saving it for this moment.

Mr K brought me in.
‘It’s your birthday?’ He asked, ‘Let me get Deepti…!’
He disappeared, leaving the nurse and me waiting.
Then Deepti and the Registrar came in, and they sang to me.
‘Happy birthday to you…’
Then, believe it or not, Mr K came in and joined in.
Ahhhh I giggled, I smiled, what a treat!

I think we were all dressed up in celebration. They took the stitches out of my head, which was nice. They didn’t have any results for me then.

But they did eventually. About three weeks later, I got the call from Deepti.
‘What are you up to?’ She asked me. It was just past 7pm.
‘Oh I’m just sitting and reading’ I said, trying to sound cool. In reality I was in bed, about to go to sleep. It’s a miracle I hadn’t already put my phone on Airplane mode and started zoning out. I was sitting and reading though…
‘Mr K got HUGE MARGINS’ she said.
I let out an involuntary ‘yayyyyyyyyy’
I didn’t realise how much of a relief hearing that had been.
Who needs clear margins when you can have huge margins! I slept easily that night.

A day or so later when my lack of right eye felt claustrophobic, I thought ‘I hope he didn’t take more than he needed…’
I keep reminding myself how much I just needed him to get the damn thing out.
Please just get the damn thing out.
But I can’t pretend that thought didn’t hover through my mind.

But as my Aunt said, ‘You unfortunately needed huge margins, I think.’
Yeah, I think I did. Last time they didn’t get clear margins, this time it was huge margins.
There are ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEES. Who knows if there are still Osteosarcoma bitches hiding behind my beautiful exterior.
But this feels like (and I think we’re altogether in hoping this) we’re done now. More surgery needed to reconstruct, but like… The cancer thing? Yeah, we’ve had enough.

So cheers to that, hey? As far as we can tell, I am going into 2021 cancer free.