Unlike most of North America, I am not celebrating Valentine’s Day today. Instead, I celebrate Biopsy Day. Today is the anniversary of the biopsy that confirmed my diagnosis of osteosarcoma.

Twenty-nine years ago today, my talented and compassionate surgeon broke the news that my right femur (thigh bone) would need further surgeries to remove the tumor and rebuild my leg with a bone graft and metal supports, as well as months of high-dose, in-patient chemo.

Like many cancer survivors, I turn contemplative on the anniversary of my biopsy. I feel tremendous gratitude for my continued survival. I am grateful for the amazing family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues who have supported me through my long journey of cancer care and then of late effects. I am deeply grateful for the privilege of comprehensive and affordable health insurance, without which I would not have been diagnosed as quickly, nor had access to high quality treatment.

At the same time, today is a day in which I grieve the loss of the person I was before cancer. I grieve the lonely nights in the hospital, the unspeakable pain, the endless complications and side effects, the TIA that left my entire left side numb and paralyzed for hours, almost 20 years of surgeries that culminated in the eventual loss of my leg, the advent of phantom limb pain, and learning to live on pain medications.

For a long time, I tried to reject the grief, sadness, and resentment that I feel about my cancer and late effects because I thought it was wrong not to be grateful for my survival. Osteosarcoma strikes many children and teens, killing them before they even have a chance to grow up. To feel pain and loss seemed horribly inappropriate for a long-term survivor when others die of cancer every day.

Yet over time, I came to understand my gratitude and grief as interwoven and inextricable from one another. My cancer diagnosis was a defining moment that forever altered my life course, in good ways as well as difficult ones. I would never have become a professor who studies communication in health care delivery if I had not had such intense treatment experiences. I would not be developing innovative methods for researching and sharing patients’ (and health care providers’) experiences if I had not been forced to conduct research in my unruly survivor body.

So today I embrace both my gratitude and my grief. I feel happiest when I am honest about the whole range of my emotions each year on my biopsy anniversary. Acknowledging my pain and losses frees me to release them in a way that denying them never could.

I wish you all a Happy Biopsy Day!