For some patients, targeted therapy is not a chapter but a chapter that keeps continuing. When your treatment becomes indefinite — a pill every morning, scans every few months, a future held in careful suspension — you begin to understand that this is not a sprint toward being done. It is learning to live within the ongoing.
This is hard in ways that are not always acknowledged. The world around you often expects cancer to follow a narrative arc: diagnosis, treatment, recovery, survivor. When your experience does not fit that shape, you can feel invisible — neither sick enough to need constant support, nor well enough to simply move on.
Allow yourself to grieve the timeline you expected. Even if the drug is working beautifully, there is still a loss in realizing that your life will be organized around scans and medications for the foreseeable future. That grief is not ingratitude. It is honesty.
Find the rhythm that works for you. Some people find it helpful to treat their targeted therapy very matter-of-factly — as one more thing they do each morning, like vitamins, with as little emotional weight as possible. Others need to acknowledge its significance regularly. Neither approach is wrong.
Watch for scanxiety. Many long-term targeted therapy patients find that the weeks leading up to each scan become their most emotionally difficult periods, even when previous scans have been clear. This is normal. Develop strategies for navigating that window of time: increased support from loved ones, activities that absorb your attention, movement that releases physical tension.
Connect with others who are in the same situation. The experience of indefinite targeted therapy is specific enough that general cancer support groups may not fully address what you are navigating. Look for communities of patients on similar drugs or in similar situations. Their particular understanding can be deeply relieving.
Let your medical team know how you are doing beyond the physical. Emotional wellbeing is part of your overall health. If anxiety or depression is affecting your daily life, that is information your team needs and can help with.