Every day, I am in some kind of pain or discomfort. I’m not writing this to solicit any pity or anything like that. I am trying to be honest about what it’s like to live with metastatic breast cancer.

Ever since my diagnosis almost 5 years ago, my stomach has been trying to murder me. I have had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) my entire life, but once I learned about my stage 4 diagnosis, my IBS became my number one hater. If I had a nickel for every time I said, “My stomach hurts,” then I could probably pay off the rest of my mortgage.

The other day at the gym. I went to just kneel down on a pad to do an exercise and my knee went, “Haha, I’m going to fuck up your entire day.” It has felt like pressure building underneath my kneecap since yesterday morning. The pain has lessened today but it’s still there when I walk down the stairs.

It’s a real mindfuck when you realize, “Hey, I can’t remember the last time I went a whole day and I felt fine.” I’m either exhausted or my stomach is killing me or my joints are reminding me that I’m a 45 year old woman with stage 4 cancer. However, I am glad that I was always grateful for my “good health” between my stage 1 diagnosis and my stage 4 diagnosis. I used that time to run, run, and then run some more.

The transition from being a 40 year old long-distance runner to a 45 year old stage 4 cancer patient has not been easy. I mourn every day for the Lara I used to be. What does help me, though, is accepting the fact that version of me is gone. I still work full-time, so I get to still straddle between the worlds of everyone else and being a cancer patient.

I write all this as a testament to what it’s been like for me to have stage 4 cancer. It’s a condition that I cannot forgot for one day, although I wish I could.