Ever since returning from vacation almost 2 weeks ago I have been mentally preparing myself for this coming Friday. Scan day. My 6 month PET/CT.
My first follow up this past February was better than I dreamed: NED. Only 6 short months of hormone treatment and I had no active cancer. The celebration was short lived…in April my blood work started coming back with numbers headed on the upswing. Creeping ever so slowly but definitely going up. I have been told not to worry…not to panic…could mean nothing. Tell a cancer patient not to worry? That’s funny. When you have (or had) cancer worrying is second nature. Also I have been experiencing more pain than usual…been tired…just not feeling right.
So…try as I might to stay positive…and I am, I am also mentally preparing myself to hear those words again. That the cancer is back. That it found a way around the exemestane and a new treatment plan will be necessary. This is not me being negative. This is self preservation on my part. I can’t be blind sided by bad news. I have my son to think about. He won’t be in the room when we meet with the Dr but he is coming on this trip and I can’t be a puddle of tears when its over. I have to be brave and show him I can and will fight.
I’m jumping to a host of conclusions. Will I have IV chemo? Will I have to get a port? Will I lose my hair? What will I look like bald? How sick will I get? How much worse will I feel? How long will this treatment last? Will there be a clinical trial? None of these questions will be answered before the scan. Some won’t be answered until much later. But I need to think about these things and mentally prepare myself for my possible future. Lord knows if not now it will be later. That’s how stage 4 works after all. I’m on a carousel that goes round and round….never stopping. Only sometimes it slows down and sometimes it speeds up. Right now I feel it speeding up. All I can do is get prepared while I pray for positive news.