So after what felt like weeks of worries, we finally heard my husband's latest scan results!
It had been a hectic week full of work, family stuff and hospital appointments. I had already exhausted every possible outcome of what the scan could show!
After being in the cancer world for over 7 years now, I feel like I can often read a situation on what's happening, so when we were called into the office earlier than planned, of course I panicked! All my possible outcomes of the scans started to go round my mind, the thought of being called in earlier must mean bad news, why else would they drag us into the room early?! And there were three of them!!!
Well, I'm happy to report, I was wrong, I read the situation wrong completely! The scan shows more improvements to my husband's cancer - YAAAAAY so continuing on chemotherapy, slow and steady wins the race and all that!!
Now I'm not sure about anyone else but positive scan results seem to drain me more than bad scan results. Whether it's because I go into auto pilot at bad news and start focusing on the next step or with a positive scan result, am I allowing myself to breathe and stop over analysing, over thinking, over worrying...for a short time!
Telling people the scan results is always nice as it's nice to be telling people good news for a change, but because we've been in the situation before (treatment working, cancer free, relapse, treatment working, cancer free, relapse) we know how quickly things can turn sour, so feel we have to justify how it's "early days' "treatment can stop at any time" is that us protecting them or is it because we're protecting ourselves and scared to let ourselves actually believe things are going ok for the time being!
Please don't get me wrong, we celebrate every scan result! We make sure we toast with something fizzy and allow ourselves to enjoy the news, after all we know that in the future we might not have these happy scans to toast to so might as well enjoy every scan we can!
I've been talking to a fair few people in the cancer world about scan results and a lot of them, myself included, feel that once you've had a scan, that sort of entitles you to three months pass to life again, you sort of think "Oh nice one, scans good, that means Xmas can go ahead now!" it shouldn't be like this but you do sort of go into this relaxed state for a while and get back into the norm that is chemotherapy life!
I overheard a consultant saying to a family the other day, "Don't underestimate the stress of a scan!" I literally could have high-fived him (he might have been a bit weirded out by a complete stranger doing that!)
For the first time in a long time, I feel calm, as if a weight has been lifted, everything round me has been manic recently, not just my husband's health, but everything!
