Scanxiety
I learned about something called scanxiety when I was first diagnosed and spent a lot of time on Facebook groups populated with women with breast cancer. Scanxiety is a self explanatory portmanteau — it is the feeling of being anxious while waiting for the results of a scan.
My medical team is going to use scans to monitor my cancer’s progression moving forward so scanxiety is going to be a pretty regular thing for me. I had my first PET scan on Monday. When I checked in, I was given a card that indicated I would be “radioactive” for a period of four days and that I should avoid pregnant women and children under the age of one. I was then taken back to a small room where my blood sugar was checked. I flinched a bit, thinking of the time during my recent hospital stay when a tech came in to check my blood sugar. I asked why she was doing that as I had been there over a week without my blood sugar being an issue. She said, “well, with your diabetes…” and I pulled my hand away. “I don’t have diabetes!” She apologized and I, of course, apologized for being overly harsh (and of course, I wasn’t really.)
Next step was getting an IV put in. Due to my surgery in 2019, I can only use the veins on my left arm and those veins have been through some s**t. They endured numerous sticks over the last two years, carried the chemo poison throughout my body, and probably wondered why the right side was getting off so easy. One of the nice things about MSK is that they use heating pads to warm your veins up before they stick them and then they use a kind of ace bandage wrap thing rather than bandages. As someone with overused veins and somewhat hairy arms, it’s the little things that count. Once the IV was in, I went to the room next door to get hooked up to the machine that would make me radioactive. After that, I had to drink a large bottle of something that looked like water but was definitely not water. Then I had to wait for an hour by myself while science did its thing. I couldn’t have anyone with me because well, I was radioactive. I tried to read, do a crossword, listen to music. I thought about what I wanted for lunch. I cried a little. I gave myself a pep talk. I’ve been lucky to have close friends and my sister with me during some of the most stressful parts of this journey. But that hour is me and me alone. Finally, it was time to go into the room, lie still, and hope for the best.
A few hours later, I was sitting in an exam room, holding my BFF’s hand, while a nurse practitioner read my results. Best case scenario was the PET scan showed what we knew about — the two spots I dubbed Monique and Nicole. And that’s the news I got. Monique, the femur, was still there although the fracture seemed to be healing. Nicole, the pelvis spot, was also hanging on but there was still time for the radiation to do its thing. Overall, the news was good and I exhaled.
I started new medication this week and will get my next PET scan in three months. Again, we will be hoping to see no new “hot spots” and possibly even a reduction of Monique and Nicole.
It is hard to put into words the notion of living your life in three month intervals. And maybe that’s not even the best way to think about it. But I think at least till I get used to this “new normal” (good grief, has that phrase been overused this past year), that’s how it is going to feel for a bit. You get an “all clear” and are told to go forth, take your meds, and come back in three months. Even typing that seems an unfathomable existence. And yet, it is mine.
I often long to go back to the days before I was first diagnosed, or before my recurrence, before this became my life. But life doesn’t work that way. We don’t get one more moment with those we’ve lost, we don’t get to undo a decision that had terrible consequences, we don’t get to freeze time when everything feels perfect. All we can do is to keep moving forward. And for me that means trying to enjoy each moment before I’m back in that room again, holding my breath and hoping for the best.
