“Your blood tests still aren’t looking great. You’re right on the edge,” my oncologist greeted me.

I sighed. It had already been about seven weeks since my last chemotherapy session, and my blood still hadn’t recovered. My red blood cells were finally doing better, but my white blood cells were still causing problems. Sleep, exercise, doing absolutely nothing… nothing seemed to help.

“But your CT scan looks excellent!”

That was the news I’d been waiting for all week. The radiographer couldn’t tell me whether she saw anything that shouldn’t be there. She only had the first and last images and had to wait for the computer to reconstruct the full scan.

“Since you’re now in complete remission, we can start your maintenance treatment,” he said, almost casually.

No smile. Not even a moment to celebrate that the monster was finally nowhere to be seen.

After two open surgeries, six rounds of chemotherapy, and a total of eight months, it was finally over.

When I look at the stories of my fellow cancer warriors, I actually had it relatively “easy.” No, there is no such thing as a better or worse cancer. Some people are simply lucky enough to have it caught very early. Some don’t have other illnesses or complications. Some bodies respond well to treatment. Some cancers grow slowly, others are much more aggressive and spread quickly. Some like to sleep. Others have a habit of coming back.

The truth is, though, I wasn’t overly happy in that moment. I almost felt afraid to smile.

It’s not like being told your surgery was successful and everything is behind you. We won this huge, important battle, but the war continues. One chapter has closed, and another begins immediately, bringing a whole new set of challenges.

Because I carry a BRCA1 mutation, I’m a good candidate for targeted maintenance therapy. The drug my doctors chose for me is called Olaparib.

Our cells constantly repair small amounts of damage to their DNA. Cancer cells with a BRCA mutation have already lost one of those repair pathways. Olaparib blocks another repair mechanism, leaving those cancer cells unable to survive. Healthy cells usually still have alternative ways to repair their DNA, so they’re affected much less.

The goal of Olaparib isn’t to shrink a tumour—that was the job of surgery and chemotherapy. Its purpose is to keep the cancer from coming back for as long as possible. In other words, it targets any microscopic cancer cells that may still be hiding somewhere in my body—too small to be detected on scans.

My professor would have preferred to give my body at least another week to recover, but because of the insurance rules, it was time to start. If more than eight weeks pass after your last chemotherapy session, this treatment is no longer covered. The rules are strict.

One pack of 56 tablets costs around 58,900 CZK (about $2,700 USD). It lasts me just 14 days. That means the treatment costs roughly 118,000 CZK ($5,400 USD) per month. I’ll be taking it for about two years, bringing the total cost to around 2.8 million CZK (about $128,000 USD). So I’m lucky I’m getting my treatment back home and for free.

Because my blood counts are still struggling, I’ll be back for another check-up in just two weeks to see how my body is handling the new treatment. Normally, those appointments are about a month apart.

As time passes, I find myself looking at the whole situation more and more optimistically. I even smile sometimes when I think about it. I’m not as afraid anymore.

Cancer will always be part of my life. Whether physically, or simply in my mind.

There isn’t much point in constantly torturing myself with something I can’t control. We’re doing everything we possibly can, and that simply has to be enough.

Last November, I was told I had stage IV ovarian cancer. The cancer had already spread to my lymph nodes, even to those behind my heart.

To go from a diagnosis like that to “there’s nothing visible” in just eight months—without radiation therapy and without any major complications—feels like a small miracle, one we’ll be grateful for for the rest of our lives.