Today I got my first set of results from a scan post-treatement. The results for my abdomen/pelvis came back quickly, and they were good, but the chest results didn’t come in until today, roughly 5 days later. Waiting was hellish. I slept maybe 5 hours a night. At one point I went to a wedding, but all I could think about was whether or not it’d be the last one I ever attend.
When I finally got my results today, and they said that my lungs are responding to treatment, I cried from relief. For the first time since diagnosis it no longer feels like I’m dying. For the first time in months I can look at my daughter and not wonder if she’ll even remember me. I can plan for the future and not secretly be wondering if I’ll ever see it. A good scan is no guarantee, but it is certainly a measure of hope.
What people don’t understand about a dianosis like cancer is how very thoroughly it sucks the hope from your life. It’s not like a lot of the other worries or fears I’ve had, when I look around the stories are almost always bad, and my worries don’t seem any less serious in the light of day. No doctor is going to diagnose you with cancer and then say “don’t worry too much; this isn’t that bad” especially not when you’re stage 4. My first oncologist actually cried. A diagnosis like mine is considered incurable, merely treatable.
The treatment I get has made it impossible to sing, my hands sting when I pull things from the refridgerator, and I can’t go out in 60 degree weather without my legs cramping so severely that I develop a limp. Sometimes the cold air even triggers wheezing episodes that have sent me to the ER. Every meal hurts to eat due to the strange effect chemo has on my mouth, and even if it didn’t, eating has lost it’s appeal. Every side effect brings on new fears and anxieties, and each of them chip away a little more at feeling anything like the person I once was, but they’re all worth it for the hope of having a future again. I think that can be hard to grasp, too, the sudden willingness to trade away everything that made me, me, just for a chance to keep going, but here I am, trading away my sense of normalcy with the reckless abandon and desperation of the only kid at a lunch table whose mom refuses to pack them any processed snacks.
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