Basket Case

 I can't believe that the last time I wrote a blog post was in May - the time has flown and I'm approaching the start of the anniversaries.  In May, around the time of the last blogpost, we passed the one year anniversary of Faith's diagnosis when we learned that her thyroid cancer had spread to her lymph nodes eliciting a much bigger surgery and subsequent radiation.  And now we are rapidly appraching the one year anmniversary of my diagnosis.  Funny that I don't remember the exact date but I do remember the date that started the whole ball rolling...my annual mammogram.  The last 4 years it has been in late June/early July as I was part of that clinical trial testing 3D mannograms vs regular mammograms (spoiler alert - the 3D, new technology ones are better, though my cancer was detected with a traditional mammogram so book that appointment to get your boobs checked!).  

Anyway, once you've been through treatment for cancer, you get put on a new schedule for follow ups, like mammograms.  It is supposed to be about 6 months after the end of your active treatment.  So that means that mine is coming up, which has brought up a ton of feelings and emotions, as well as triggered a bunch of memories from the "before times".  

Do you have the time to listen to me whine?
About nothing and everything, all at once
I am one of those melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it
Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid? I don't know (Basket Case, Green Day)

People in the cancer community refer to "scanxiety" as the anxiety approaching upcoming scans. I thought I had my anxiety under contorl until I recevied the email from MyChart about an upcoming appointment.  I opened it and, surprise surprise, my mammogram appointment is THE SAME DAY as it was last year, on my sister's birthday.  Pretty much the same time too.  First thing in the am - last year, I went to my mammogram, went to work then went to celebrate my sister's 50th birthday at her pub downtown.  

The optimist in me says that with a negative scan, this coincidence in dates will allow me to reclaim July 9 as a day to celebrate my younger sister.  The pessimist in me says that reocurrence of breast cancer happens all the time.  

Turning the calendar over to July (yes, I still keep a family wall calendar in my kitchen) has triggered a bunch of (sc)anxiety.  In late June, Faith also had her first CT scan with contrast dye since her radiation and is expecting results in July from her endocrinologist.  These are the things I knew were hapening by late June.  But life has a way of throwing curve balls and on July 1, my hubby's birthday and Canada Day, I found out that a friend of mine, who I had grown up with, had passed away.  When I say "grown up" I mean everything - I met him when I moved to Blackburn Hamlet in grade 3 and went to school with him all the way through middle school, high school and then Queen's University.  We went to high school dances, neighbourhood parties, Red Pine Camp, Fun Fairs and all kinds of things together, as kids growing up in the 80s.  He was a unique, fun-loving, smart and empathetic person whom I lost touch with after university in 1995.  When I heard of his passing on July 1, I also learned that everyone from high school and Blackburn had lost touch with him by about 1998 when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He spent the next almost 30 years between homes, shelters and the streets. 

I know that I am lucky to have relatively good mental health.  Scanxiety is not nearly as scary as a serious mental illness though it feels real to me.  And if feels like things are spiralling a bit.  Until I get the good news back from both Faith and my scans, I will be on edge. Scared. Maybe distant and pulling in to myself.  Anxious.  And just trying to keep busy to pass the time and stay in control, as much as I can.  

Grasping to control
So I better hold on

 As most of you will know, I am also coming up to the anniversary of my mom's death as well.  So, while July used to be so much fun with the promise of birthdays (mine, my sister's and Shawn's), late nights, holidays, cottage-time, beaches, camping and bonfires, this year I am much more somber.