Wednesday was a panic inducing day! Actually, the last couple of days had me starting to panic about my scan results and the fact that I didn’t get a notice that my results were waiting for me in the MyChart portal had me reading between the lines that something might be wrong. Ya know? Anything out of the ordinary…good OR bad OR just different had me thinking, even though I was feeling well, that something was/is wrong.
Wednesday morning, I packed the dog into the car extra early to take her to her favorite downtown doggy daycare because mamma had a lot to do. Before my visit with Hot Oncologist where I’d find out my fate, I had a dental cleaning. I made the appointment on the same day because my dentist’s office is across the street from the hospital where the cancer center is. And before the dentist, I took myself to a coffee shop to sip a hot chai tea, write up my list of questions and concerns for Hot Onc and try to just settle my nerves.
Dentist visit was fine. I said hello to sweet receptionist Cara, who is a precious woman, probably 10 years older than me and reminds me a little of my future self, which scares me a bit. On second thought, no! No, she is NOT my future self. While Cara is a sweet yet quirky woman, I’m not going to be like her - kind of helplessly single. This is NOT me. I will never be a silly/ditsy, quirky, helplessly single woman. I love Cara because she’s so caring and loving, but I refuse to be her from a helpless perspective.
Anyway, then we had a new dental hygienist, who was a very pretty very young woman who moved to the area from rural Arkansas a year ago. And whoa, could she talk…and talk and talk and talk! And she was asking me questions a mile a minute while she was doing my cleaning. And all I could do was make affirmative sounds and “uh huh” and things like that. WHY do they do that? How am I supposed to answer your questions, bitch?
At one point, she asked me something that was not a yes or no question and had her fingers all up in there and I ended up BITING HER THUMB because it was IN MY MOUTH when she wanted an answer to something!!
So I apologized to her, but I was annoyed that I was apologizing because it was her fault that she kept her fingers in my mouth after asking me a question. Ugh. I was lying in that dentist chair just resenting her and checking my watch to make sure I was going to make it to my oncology appointment on time.
Stress was mounting. She quickly figured that out and finished up her part and got the dentist to come in and take a look at my mouth.
The good news is, even though we never finished my implant due to my annoying cancer issue, I got a VERY clean bill of oral health from the dentist! He said I have excellent oral hygiene (I do try to take very good care of my teeth since I’ve had so many teef problems in my life). My next big dental step will be filling that space in my mouth where my implant is supposed to go. I will tackle that issue after I get a J.O.B. More on that later. For now, the flipper lives on in my mouth! It sucks, but I can live with it for a while longer.
I left the dentist’s with about five minutes to get over to the cancer center.
Checked in and blood drawn and then…the wait.
The waiting is the worst part. And it was especially bad this time because the longer I had to wait, the worse my worry got. Hot Onc Doc was running very, very late on Wednesday. My appointment was at 11am and I was still sitting in the outer reception area at 11:35. Finally at about 11:45, I was called back for vitals and then to be placed in a room. Where I waited and waited and then got moved to yet another room because the doc was running way, way behind.
…which made me feel even worse because it just seemed like he was probably giving everyone all BAD NEWS all morning long.
That’s how my mind plays tricks on me. It’s like when you’re driving home from somewhere and you have to pee and the closer you get to home, the worse the urge gets. You know that sensation? Do you remember the entry where I actually made it home after a long drive and made it as far as the stairwell next to my apartment and couldn’t quite make it up the stairs and PEED MY PANTS in the stairwell?
That’s how my anxiety was working. And I also realize that this was the first time I’ve been to the cancer center without taking at least a half of a valium tab. I thought I could do without, but instead, I sat there in that exam room in full-on panic attack mode. It got so bad I had to pull my mask down to breathe. I could feel beads of sweat starting on my brow. My heart began to race.
I ended up doing what I thought was the tapping technique on my forehead. Now, tapping is not something that I’ve ever really practiced, but I’ve seen and read about it. I’ve seen people on social media doing the tapping thing and talking about how tapping can reduce anxiety and it’s like an acupressure thing. I’ve seen videos where people tap lightly on their forehead (it’s actually the eyebrows, but I didn’t know that sitting in the exam room…I just started tapping my forehead) and then their chest and wrists and other pressure points, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing.
So there I was, tap, tap, tapping and honestly, I immediately felt better because I felt like it was somehow easing the anxiety even though I was doing it wrong. Somehow it just worked a little. I remembered some chest tapping stuff too, but again, I couldn’t quite remember how to do it, so I focused on my forehead.
And then Hot Oncologist finally showed up. I nearly burst into tears!
He started to apologize for being so late and I told him I was having a panic attack, so he immediately stopped and said, “Are you worried about your scan results? They’re fine!”
THANK GOD THAT WAS THE FIRST THING HE SAID TO ME!!!
He had the report in his hand and he sat down next to me and just went over all of the notes from the radiologist. The main thing that everyone goes to is the end of the report that says “Impression” and that’s where it read, “No new evidence of metastatic disease”
And that’s EXACTLY what you want to read. THAT is the bottom line.
Now, there are little nodes and nodules all up in my innards that we are watching in the comparison from scan to scan to make sure that they remain unchanged, and there’s a thing in my liver that that radiologist found that hadn’t been seen before, but Hot Onc went through that with me. He said that the radiologist is VERY thorough and that it’s hard when the scan is being taken to get that contrast in the exact same place in your arteries/veins from scan to scan so that sometimes some little specs show up that, even though they appear benign, if they’ve never been seen before, they need to be watched.
AnyWAY.
Long, long, loooong story short, I have been officially declared One Year Cancer Free!!!
And all that stress and all of that worry and all of the fears and racing heart and sweat immediately stopped and I could breathe again.
And I could fall in love with my Hot Oncologist allll over again (not that I had ever fallen OUT of love with him, mind you).
So, we had a fantastic rest of the visit. I do have a lot of little bumps, bruises, battle scars, aches, pains, etc. that I’ve gotten since my cancer diagnosis that I want to make sure I talk with him about, so we spent a good 30 minutes going over all of my notes and he gave me a physical exam. When I showed him the scar from the basal cell carcinoma, he took my arm and touched me soooooo delicately that my heart fluttered. Ughhhh. I’m glad we still wear masks because I know I was blushing.
We have to watch everything. I have bone aches and lingering neuropathy in my feet and just…stuff. But no matter what, I was still so freaking thrilled to know that the bastard c-word is still at bay. Four more years of surveillance.
I can handle it, but I think I’m going to need to master the tapping technique between now and then!
As I was leaving the cancer center, I had to stop at the scheduling desk to make my 3-month appointment. I talked with Brittany, my regular scheduling person, and I was telling her that I made it to the 1 year cancer-free mark, and we were all, “yaaaayyy” together and as I turned to leave, a man about my age was behind me with his infusion pole and all of his IV bags hooked up and he said, “Congratulations! I hope to get be in your position one day!”
And my heart kind of dropped and I felt a little twinge of…what? Guilt? Sadness? Hope for him? Hope for ME? Selfishness? I don’t know. It was a weird feeling that just made me feel off.
I mean, EVERYTHING about cancer is off, but this one felt particularly complicated because I don’t know his situation. He could be terminal. Or he could already be cancer free and not know it until his scan show it.
But I told him that he’ll get there - that we’ll BOTH get there.
Who knows where that is?
Gratefully,
GS
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