Discharged from being followed for cancer

Sounds like good news to me. Think it says you are cured. Yay!
Most people are not checked regularly for cancer because they are generally not at risk. Now you are not at anymore risk than they are.
Have you been checked for hvp recently. After my treatment that resolved itself. Maybe yours is gone too.

If you are not comfortable with the recommendation, schedule it anyway. You are your ONLY advocate. Do not fool yourself that anyone else knows more or better for you. Even for peace of mind.

I’m still at the start of my stage 4 NED surveillance scanning (gone from 3 monthly to 4 monthly and that was difficult. Will soon be 6 monthly). I can totally understand how confronting it must be to go from yearly to zero.

I had a look on the internet and it seems screening should be done yearly, until in certain health systems a specified age when it may arbitrarily stop if normal life expectancy is not expected to be 10 years or more. Bizarre. Seems possibly to be an expense thing. Could that be why? Did you get any explanation?

The Anal Cancer Foundation recommends everyone who had this cancer get the HPV vaccination regardless of age. Some insurance covers it up to age 45, but I'm 79 so I paid out of pocket, even though there was no obvious sign of any lingering virus. It may be like the herpes virus, which hides until something stimulates it. Statistically, having had one HPV virus cancer actually greatly increases my risk of one of 8 more HPV caused cancers, or a new anal cancer. I can only hope that the vaccine helped, because it wasn't cheap.

If I try to schedule once I am discharged, I will be denied unless I have new symptoms. That's just the way of living where there aren't enough doctors to cover all the people who are moving here.

I was just told that after 7 years he believed I was cured. Of that cancer, I am convinced. It's the others that concerns me. And I would like to live more than 10 more years, though that is not in my power.

That is interesting. Everything I read said the vaccine was not effective once you had the virus. Is this a new vaccine?
I thought that once it is gone it cannot cause other cancers. Guess getting vaccinated against it can’t hurt and may prevent getting it again. I don’t know

That is good news you’re cured from your initial cancer. (Mine cannot be cured but managed as possible, despite currently being NED for 2 years).

It looks like you’re no longer deemed high risk for HPV cancers so without any signs of concern annual screening is no longer recommended.

It also seems that it takes 15-20 years for a new HPV cancer to form. So it seems to be a risk + cost + age issue.

You perhaps need to have another chat with your oncologist to get comfortable with his thinking.
https://www.healthpartners.com/blog/ask-an-oncologist-answering-patient-questions-about-cancer-screenings
.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/human-papillomavirus-hpv/hpv-5-things-all-women-should-know

Can you send the doctor a message on MyChart, asking if you won’t be getting annual screening, & explaining your concerns?

There are two reasons that I’ve heard of (I worked in imaging & was involved with the tumor board, & research). One is that different cancers grow at different rates, many driven by hormones. As we age, our hormone levels decrease, & things typically grow more slowly. This often means that although you have a cancer, it isn’t likely to be the cause of death.
The other reason is again age related, as you know, cancer treatment is extremely hard on our body/organs/blood, and the likelihood of the treatment causing death, outweighs the likelihood of it curing cancer, &/or improving quality of life.