Today, I called to see if I could facilitate my ultrasound appointment because I hate waiting to be contacted for an appointment. It was actually surprisingly easy to find the clinic where my specialist had sent the requisition, or maybe I’m just getting good at navigating. Anyway, I tried to see if I could get my appointment earlier because my specialist had said it could take a month, but April 4th is the date I was given – a month.
“But could I have it sooner?”
I was gently but firmly told yes I could but Dr. H had specifically requested April, so no.
But why April if they could do it sooner?
I would like to interpret it as Dr. H is not that worried. On the other hand, she didn’t say she wasn’t worried. But she did say that she was going on another Disney Cruise. Now, I love Dr. H. She is an amazing doctor and seems like a wonderful person, and I would be devastated if she were ever to move or something. She literally saved my life. (How do I thank someone enough for that?) However, I have not quite forgiven her for going on a three-week Disney Cruise last year in March, and abandoning me when I was waiting for my pathology results and ended up in the hands of an incohesive web of random, one-off doctors in the hospital and ended up with a nephroscopy tube.
“So you had a good vacation?” my mother asked, genuinely, last year.
“Best vacation of my life. You should go!”
So I remember the problem with March.
But what can I do? Try to relax in March, I guess. I will be off a lot of days in March – to take March break with my kids. I really wanted a carefree March break, unlike the HORRIBLE March break of last year.
I guess I have to put my worries aside. I find that hard to do. I mean, it could be nothing. But last time, this symptom wasn’t nothing – it was everything. So how can I believe it will be anything else but that this time? Jaime says that I have to have faith, and just believe. I have definitely become more spiritual in the last year, but I am still having trouble with the concept of faith. It’s not that I require hard scientific evidence for everything (though, yes, please, preferably, I would like the hard evidence) but my question is more of a spiritual one. What about the people for whom things don’t work out in the end? Was it because they didn’t have enough faith? I don’t believe that. The God that I believe in does not punish non-believers. Maybe it is not about whether it works or not, but just that it provides comfort.
In any case, I do need to find a way to survive all of this, because the whole rest of my life will likely be about symptoms and tests and wondering about all of this. I have contacted Maplesoft for cancer coaching. It has taken me a year to contact them, because, as Jaime said, it is a group of people that I don’t want to be associated with or having anything to do with. But I am desperate. And I don’t know where to turn anymore, because I don’t have anything concrete to be scared of….just a vague symptom, a far-off test, general anxiety. Maybe some post-traumatic stress. Make that a “definitely”.
I had a hard time even filling out the Maplesoft cancer profile. What stage of cancer am I in? Am I cured? Am I in remission? Am I a survivor? What am I being tested for? None of the labels really seem to work. I had the same questions when I thought about joining the cancer discussion in the Globe and Mail today. What would I say about my status? And am I ready to go public with this? I mean, here I am obviously blogging about it on the internet, but nobody reads my blog (except for those to whom I have given the website to (maybe, though I only have one “follower”, though I do have over 1,600 hits) and some random people – Germany comes up and Russia) but not anyone I have met since last April.
I have also discovered a couple of other cancer blogs (and I thought I was the only one who did that!) thanks to the Globe and Mail. I have been reading those but I don’t know if it is good for me or not, just like I don’t know if it will be good for me to go to Maplesoft. Should I just try to forget about it and move on or work through it” Okay, clearly forgetting about it isn’t working.
Maplesoft it is.
P.S. I’ll need some more followers if I am ever to get a book deal out of this! =)
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