As 2023 draws to a close, I am thankful to be welcoming another year. Since my ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2020, I have celebrated every birthday, anniversary, Christmas and New Year with a little more gratitude than I might have otherwise. My prognosis could have been very different, so I greet each day with thanks.

Like every year since 2020, 2023 involved some health interventions. The prophylactic bilateral mastectomy I chose to have because of my high risk of breast cancer (given my BRCA2 gene mutation) occurred on July 7. Despite a subsequent infection that required that one of my two breast implants be removed on August 2, I am happy that I chose to have the bilateral mastectomy. Even if I spent half a year with one inflated breast and one deflated breast, and wore a knitted knocker to balance out my profile, I was heartened to have reduced my risk of breast cancer from 50-85% down to 5-8%. Another surgery to rebalance my breasts awaits me in 2024, but that is some months down the road.

The pathology report following my mastectomy brought the good news that I had no cancer in the breast tissue that was removed. As I wrote on July 21, "The whole purpose of the mastectomy was to get ahead of breast cancer. It would appear that I did just that. As my niece, the nurse, said, 'YOU BEAT IT.'" This was especially reassuring since I had been on the waiting list for the prophylactic mastectomy for 20 months, and, during that time, I sometimes worried that I would develop cancer before my turn for preventive surgery would come up.

I also got good news in relation to my perianal skin cancer. On January 26, I received the results of my annual pelvic MRI, which found no evidence of cancer recurrence. And, as I shared on November 4, my colonoscopy—which comes around once every five years—confirmed no issues.

With respect to ovarian cancer, my CA125 remained low and steady. On December 5, I marked three full years of a normal CA125 since my unofficial ovarian cancer diagnosis in July 2020. That was a particularly sweet milestone.

Overall, I would declare 2023 a health win. My daughter and I took up table tennis. My husband and I discovered Rice Lake near Bruce Pit and saw many birds, including a rare trumpeter swan. And I had all the energy I was accustomed to having; I used that energy in many productive ways, including to walk 2,270 kilometres over the course of the year. Among my most notable walks, once again, was the Ovarian Cancer Canada Walk of Hope, this year with my husband, and the Terry Fox Run, as usual with my son.

In October 2023, I joined the Board of Directors of Ovarian Cancer Canada, participating in my first meeting on October 23. I'm thrilled to contribute my experience with ovarian cancer to the work of this engaged organization, which is heightening awareness of the disease and bringing a focus to research that aims to reduce the number of deaths from ovarian cancer to zero.

If I were to reduce 2023 to two words, they would be health and family. These two things remain my highest priorities. My health has enabled me to be present for my family, and there's no greater role I play than that of wife, mother, sister, daughter and aunt.

Happy New Year. As a wise friend said today, "May 2024 be good to all of us."