scans – Pink Stinks

Between Scans is an Emerging Place of Refuge

It’s just one thing to hold a cup. It’s another thing to sip. It’s one thing to close your eyes, another to see. Frame by frame, each of these adds up to living. To life.

Another: my daughter enters the room, sits to check her phone. Her thumb strums the screen. Her neck is a swan staring down at the glass. All around us is the noise of living: the street traffic, dawn on a Sunday, this Sunday, here and now in the paper piles, the dishwasher hum, the ongoing ordinariness of morning.

I have passed many such mornings in a rush. So many days have rolled by in a turning of chores, tasks, to-dos. And the trance of pre-cancer life is one of there is tomorrow. You’ll get another chance. It is of course a myth, but it is one we live by.

But along comes cancer in its red truck and its repeating, manic music of death. Of dying. After nearly three years in and out of treatment, I still wake to its songs. I still wake and do a mental body scan with questions such as: Does my head hurt? How is my breathing? I check for aches, for pains. I imagine the worst. Anything lasting longer than two weeks warrants a call to my oncologist.

Life now is in-between. In-between scans, in-between appointments, in-between one medical event and another. Note the dash between “in” and “between.” It is a space I currently claim and occupy. It is hovering, unnoticed, a connector that links one state to another. A grammatical and embodied corpus callossum.

My body is a radar station and my mind is on alert.

It’s exhausting.

I’m in a holding pattern now. Treatment for the recurrence to my rib is done. Scans are over. I’m NED (no evidence of disease) for now, but the likelihood of a third recurrence is high. Every day I am learning to integrate the Fear of Recurrence into the reality of Get on With the Day, trying not to let the one disable the other.

This anxiety is real, and many cancer survivors need support in coping with the PTSD of treatment and long-term side-effects. There is no shame in this. It’s also worth noting that in terms of human evolution, living with a long-term, life-threatening illness is relatively new. Our brains haven’t been equipped to process or deal with such a scenario, and so survivorship requires practice.

“Practice.” Such a reassuring, powerful word that speaks to honoring the effort, honoring each attempt.

Each day I practice meditation and breathing.

Each day I practice honoring this body and its strengths.

I practice self-compassion, and extend this outward to loved ones, friends, community, the world.

pink and white lotus flower

“No mud, no lotus.” Thich Nhat Hanh

Practice isn’t about perfection. It is, in a nutshell, doing. Doing without judgement, doing for the sake of itself. In this sense I find it immensely liberating – there is no call to be good at it at all.

What are you practicing these days? What practices help you cope with the stressors of cancer, of disease, of life in general?

Results, Pending

The CT scan showed that the tumor is shrinking. It’s gone down by about 1 cm.

This should be good news, and it is, but the rise of the celebratory music is dampered by the ongoing knowledge of cancer’s continued presence. I am talking about a lack of trust, a lack of belief in the body’s full capabilities. This lack is not pessimism, but rather the realization that this body can and has betrayed me. Faith in a long future is a vertebrae that’s been removed. One slight hunch is now always impacting movement, tilting each tentative step. It’s a little harder to look up.

“Continue the treatment until it shrinks further.” Then surgery, then recovery.

Then wait.

My old life feels like a harbor from which I drift further away each day.

I do not want to sound sad. There is always coffee, or sunlight.

A friend or a flower.

A note or a text message, laughter, friendship, good books, food, family, naps. You, they, these things:

are all the antidote.
are all I need.

And the truth is? We are always pending, are always, like the pendulum,

asway.

You Are a Charged, Lit Bulb: Waiting for the SCAN

It’s coming.

bright bulb close up conceptual — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

It’s the CT, PET, or MRI. The acronyms don’t matter as much as the fear, because what if? What if there’s a blip, a lighting up, a growth, a recurrence, an expansion, a concern? And what if there isn’t? What then?

(“Clear,” calls the Emergency Medical Technician before shocking the heart.)

Cancer is an abusive lover. I’ve learned not to celebrate too much when things go well, because the trust in a long-term, healthy future is gone. Even if the scans show nothing, trust in the world has failed. The sure sense in an ongoing future has failed. Planning a year or five years ahead with certainty? Failed. This “lover” – cancer – is always lurking, its revenge always a possibility. It hides its power, it lures you into comfort. It charms you back into living. It leads you back into your body, the ease of each day’s choreographies: movements through the front door, work, friends, gestures here and there, family, food.

Oh hello, hair, hello travel plans — let us begin again. Let us pretend with the ease of the healthy-bodied living that we are ever ongoing, that we will not, in our careful financial records and remodeling plans, ever perish. Tahiti? Paris? A mani-pedi scheduled for Friday. Oh, and the workout.

Scans jolt me out of this trance. There is the word we are all trying so hard to avoid: death. Dying. A finite closure, that the body and mind and this life as we know it will end. Will.

And so, I have a scan today. A CT scan to see if this current treatment of Xeloda and Taxotere are working to shrink this recurrence. If the tumor has shrunk, we continue, proceed with later surgery, and keep cancer at bay for awhile longer. I’ll take it.

If it’s not working, then we don’t know. Clinical trials, hope for the best.

Filaments, fibers, fears.

Not Glass

3:26 AM.

I woke up to the crack and touch of an ice window breaking.

As if under water.

My CT scan is next week.

full frame shot of snowflakes — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com