u/Star-Owl-

Once upon a time, there was a woman who had a very regular monthly cycles and predict, down to the day, when she start her monthly, flow. This was, of course, very convenient and helpful in planning things in her life.

However, one day she received the unfortunate phone call from her doctor that said “you have breast cancer”.

Determined to put on a good face, she went through the recommended double mastectomy and the following DIEP flap reconstruction surgery. Celebrating her recovery, she began to reimagine the rest of her life.

Maybe she would get a tattoo (finally).

Or dye her hair a fun color.

Or join a book club.

Or learn to knit.

All in all, she considered herself fortunate, and knew that she was very lucky to have not have needed more intensive treatments to get rid of the cancer.

Then one fateful day…

She met with a new oncologist, who suggested that she take tamoxifen to lower her risk of breast cancer recurrence.

Always the intellectual, she did all of her due diligence before agreeing to trial the medication.

When she started taking the medicine everything seemed normal at first, but once she got to day 26 of her monthly cycle (which had begun being about 25 days in recent years), she began to wonder…

“Could it possibly be true? Could I possibly be one of the very fortunate women who completely stops their monthly cycle on this medicine??”

If it took surviving breast cancer to remove this inconvenient, bloody thorn from her side (metaphorically of course), then doggoneit, she was going to celebrate that too!

As the days marched on, she made sure to carry around to her ever faithful menstrual cup with her, just in case.

Every day she would check her cycle tracker and continue to be amazed as the days’ numbers kept climbing higher and higher.

Alas, however, it was not to be.

And finally, after 45 days, she was reunited with her Aunt Flo.

Drat it all.