March 17, 2013. To many of you readers out there, March 17 was St. Patrick’s Day. A day for all to be Irish and indulge in a pint of Guinness and a shot of Jameson. If you are a 21 year old frat boy, St. Patrick’s Day is a day like the rest. A day to drink a keg of Guinness (if only they made those) and a liter of Jameson. For me and for every St. Patrick ’s Day hereafter, I have a very different reason to celebrate. St. Patrick’s Day was a year since my “release” from my month long stint at Sloan. March 16, 2012 was the first time my doctor uttered the word remission in regards to me. My body had responded to chemotherapy and even though I had three more week long stints in Sloan doing the tango with extra chemo, I was considered cancer free. A year mark is not a big one. Five years is the number doctors tend to give patients to look forward too. Yet a year, for me, is a little win. Little wins came to mean so much to me since my diagnosis and a year of remission is a great little win. I may have four years left of remission, of life, of illness until I reach my big, big win. Until then I celebrate the little ones. So on March 16, my family and loved ones surrounded me once again and celebrated my year. We drank and ate and had fun because really, my life isn’t measured by length or illness. It is cliché but I gauge my life by how much life I put in it. On St. Patrick’s Day, I continued my celebration. I put on a wig not because I was ashamed of my bald head (I now have a cute pixie cut) but to celebrate and have fun. I donned green and had my Guinness in the form of an Irish car bomb and cheered to a year more of life. Trust me, that cocktail was much more satisfying than the chemo cocktail Sloan administers.