Hi everyone, I've had a call today to ask me to go for a routine ct scan tomorrow morning.
Had the all clear back in January, and currently off work as my mental health is all over the place. I just went through the motions when I was back and forth to hospital and having surgery. And only recently its finally hit me and I've hit the wall.
Now,my anxiety is through the roof worrying that they will discover more cancer and I'll have to go through everything all over again.
Is it normal to feel like this? I think I'm now suffering with Health Anxiety, as any time I get ill, straight away mu head is thinking that cancer has returned.
Will I feel like this forever? It's draining the life out of me. I'm a single mum, and only managing to hold it all together for my kids. My OCD has gone into overdrive and I'm paranoid about germs and getting sick again.
Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read my waffling, hope I'm making some sense.
Hi Doodlebug,
I think once we've had a cancer diagnosis, it's always in the back of the mind that it might return. I've noticed that the consultants are not shy of saying the surgery has been "curative" if they've got everything out, but my latest one did add that obviously he couldn't categorically say that it wouldn't return sometime in the future. Which is only stating a fact. When the statistics apparently now are that one in two of us will get cancer at some stage in our life (which I think is currently higher than the percentage they are saying will get Alzheimers/dementia) I guess that those of us who have had it, at least know what to expect, and those who have not had it, still have it to come.
Bear in mind though that it's unlikely that the cancer will have come back in three months, if you had the all clear in January. Not impossible, obviously - but, not likely. It's perfectly normal however to fear this, whether it's three months or three years. I have effectively been signed off for good two years after my endometrial cancer, but at the back of my mind is still that this year, next year, in ten years, it could return. A serious illness diagnosis of any kind really shocks you into standing back and looking at your own mortality.
I try and work with this from two angles: firstly, I try not to focus on the negative but on the positive. So I try and draw my thoughts away from whether or when it will come back, and instead visualise the offending substance being taken away out of my body - all gone, with "good margins" as my kidney surgeon put it. I try and let my focus settle on the fact that it has gone, rather than letting my thoughts drift to the possibility it may one day come back.
The second thing I do, is remind myself constantly to "seize the day" - live in the moment. I have two dogs - I have always had dogs - and I walk them almost always at their pace; they stop to sniff a blade of grass, I notice the robin sitting on the fence nearby; they stick their nose in a hedge to get the smells of the wildlife that went through that hedge, and I lift my head and sniff the blossom hanging off the nearby tree. Might sound a bit 'corny', the way I'm describing it - but I mean to say, I enjoy the smallest joys in life, in a similar way as my dogs do. I have done this for many years but I still sometimes need to remind myself to continue to do this. It's that feeling you get when it's a sunny day with deep blue sky and the perfect amount of light breeze, and you say to yourself, "it's great to be alive!"
There's nothing wrong with being OCD about germs. Quite a lot of people are. I was OTT about Covid and wore my mask and face shield way longer than anyone I have come across. Result: I never got Covid, didn't get a cold for the first nearly three years, and felt comfortable by being in control of my own health safety. With cancer, one of the things people find is that they feel they are not in control, and as humans, we do have a need to feel in control. Therefore, any little thing you can do to help you feel there is some part of it at least that you are in control of, is positive. And working to keep yourself and your family healthy on a day to day level, is one thing you are fully in control of.
I am a generally very positive person but where my health is concerned, I do have a tendency to fear the worst, and then mostly find that it is way, way less serious than what I imagine. So I do work at visualising the outcome as good rather than bad, and I think positive thoughts do help. Sometimes I lose a hold of my positivity - and I think that's where you are at the moment. But yes, I believe it's very normal to have these worries and fears, and I don't think anyone could honestly say they never have had.
I think as time passes, our worry will lessen. My worry over my endometrial cancer is still fairly fresh two years later, but I believe once it goes three, four, five years or more down the line, I will be thinking way less about it than I even am now. Because I went through that, when the kidney cancer hit me I thought, "oh no, not again!!" but then realised that I had the experience of the first, to help me through the second. And I have been fortunate in having a very early stage histology for both cancers, which admittedly not everyone has.
You will regain confidence over your health. It just takes time.
Sending you hugs 
