Are we here again?
The Wait
My husband most likely has cancer. That statement still seems surreal, absurd, it can't be true. I am still grappling with my own feelings of living with cancer. Fresh on the heels of my own diagnosis and treatment all the feelings seem to come rushing back in. A blessing and a curse, I understand how he’s feeling better than most…and I now very much understand how he felt when we faced cancer less than two years ago. How unlucky are we to have this happen? Yet, how lucky are we to have each other, what a unique support system. This is the hardest part. I remind myself over and over, waiting for pathology, waiting for staging and a treatment plan, this is the worst, we are almost through the worst. I am scared of what our year ahead will look like. Will it be another year of hours in chemo chairs, scheduling our life around treatments and one of us incapacitated for days at a time? Or will surgery be it and we move on. I tell myself this is different. Testicular cancer is not as serious as breast cancer and I am immediately plagued with guilt. Cancer is cancer. Am I diminishing his experience by even considering it would be easier than mine? The tennis match of emotions in my body feels debilitating at times. Today is his first scan. I have written about it before, scanxiety is real. While he assures me he isn’t worried, I, on the other hand, am a sweaty ball of jitters trying to not let panic overtake me. We caught it early, all signs point to that. All signs point to surgery being it and we move on with our lives. But the blessing and the curse, we’ve done this before. Before all signs pointed to it being early no need for chemo…and that wasn’t my story. Trying to untangle the mess of emotions and fears to separate them, his journey is not mine, mine is not his. This is the hardest part, the wait.
Unremarkable
Unremarkable, the tension I had been shoving down for the past 48 hours immediately felt lighter. “Show me the report!” I needed to see the words, needed to read it for myself. A CT scan from the neck down, you’re going to find things if you look. I tried to not hyperfocus on other little findings and just celebrate that the surgical region was unremarkable. Unremarkable. The cancer is gone. There will be no more follow up surgeries, our treatment plan is not going to be the worst case. We can breathe again. This is not as serious as my diagnosis and instead of feeling guilt thinking that, I feel joy. My husband does not have to endure the grueling treatment I did. Our life doesn't have to revolve around it for the next year. Sure there will be follow up scans and of course the fact that in our 30s we faced our own mortality more than most our age. But in many ways it’s an oddly good thing. A terrifying experience but now we are heavily monitored. Our health has to be a priority.
It is not Cancer
The pathology results are in. There are a lot of big words that feel like a foreign language. We are used to this, we’ve done this before. But this time it’s different. This time my husband is told he is a rare case. A tumor that presents as cancer, but is in fact not cancer. He does not have cancer, did not have cancer. That’s it, we are done. Follow ups sure, a few more scans to be sure, but it’s over. The worst part, the wait is over. Only this time it ended with better news than we ever could have hoped for. The relief is overwhelming in the best way possible and I am filled with bubbling joy. Our family is safe, this is not the worst case but instead the best!
As a cancer survivor my new reality is convincing myself not everything is the worst case. That not every pain is my cancer returning. I was worried my husband having cancer would break my ability to rationalize my fears. But instead I am reminded that in life bad things happen, but good things happen too. While I celebrate the relief I also can’t help but feel a small ping of jealousy that my story wasn’t as simple. Living with cancer, while the rouge cells may be gone, your life is altered and changed. Living with cancer means there are still follow ups, anxious waits and often ongoing “maintenance” treatment. All of which have side effects. It’s this strange reality to go from, in my case, being perfectly fine to being medically complex and dealing with side effects while juggling scheduling healthcare appointments and the logistics of insurance. Life can be hard, cancer is hard and I wish I could say that survivorship is easy but it certainly isn’t without it’s challenges. For now though I remain settled in the fact that we are safe, my children are healthy, my husband does not in fact have cancer and I remain evidence free of disease.