Strutting Into Year 11 With Metastatic Breast Cancer

Martha Carlson received a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer in 2015. Read all of Martha's blogs here!

I titled this blog, “Strutting Into Year 11.” Anyone who knows me will laugh at the title because if there is one thing I am not, it’s a strutter.

But this year demanded a little more from me — more confidence, more faith, more, more, more. There have been other years like this during my time living with cancer: year three comes to mind, when I passed the median life expectancy (at that time) for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC), and so does year five, when I suddenly saw the world return to me with more hope than I’d felt since I received my diagnosis.

There’s a pretty big gap between year five and year 11, but falling in those gap years are the worst: COVID years, my mother’s death from MBC, the loss of very good friends to MBC and some general family upheavals. It’s been a rough stretch, and despite what I see as scary and uncertain times ahead, I want to believe we will see better.

Personally, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be entering my second decade living with this disease. The first thing I wondered is if 11 is considered a lucky number. Turns out that in some cultures, 11 is associated with new beginnings, spiritual awakening and auspicious opportunities, representing alignment and balance.

I can get behind that for a year.

Of course, if there is a “new beginning”, there is also a past. When you live this long with stage 4 cancer, receiving regular treatments with annoyingly long-lasting side effects, time doesn’t stand still. In addition to being the start of my second decade with cancer, this is also the start of a new decade of my life. Aging with cancer is something of a challenge. There isn’t really enough known about long-term survivors like me, from adjusting treatments to maintaining quality of life. While I was once considered “young” by my oncologist, age is now an issue that demands special attention.

Year 11 truly feels like a year of new beginnings, and here’s my plan for strutting through it:

What I did: Lead with “I’ve been lucky” when asked about how I’ve stayed alive with Stage IV cancer.

2025 strut: Luck plays a role, no argument, but steps I actively take also play a role. I’m done downplaying the role of researching treatments and my belief that my behavior impacts my quality of life.

What I did: Gave the benefit of doubt to people I didn’t actually respect or believe.

2025 strut: Time is short and so is life. This has been brought home to me over the past several years. Cancer has taught me that some people are not my friends, regardless of what they say. While age is finally teaching me that I don’t have to cut everyone a little slack when they do things that are damaging.

What I did: Name every emotion, sometimes spiraling into pain that was hard to escape.

2025 strut: I still name what I’m feeling but I’m building guardrails to keep me in a better psychological space. This means things like creating more, reading more, seeing more, doing more and welcoming more. Not positivity, but a return to a bigger life.

What I did: Count my cancer losses (there’ve been a lot).

2025 strut: This decade with cancer hasn’t been all about the losses. There’s been growth too and building on that is where I am for this new beginning.

How about you?

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