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Monday, June 12, 2017

Scanxiety

I am living this life.  Or at least an approximation of it.  I am not going to have routine scans, but it is not because of the anxiety they might cause, but because they are not really indicated,.  However, my cancer does have tumor markers, so I am now getting those every three months.  For some reason, I did not really dread them when I was getting them every four weeks over the last year and a half.  Intellectually, I knew that about 25% of people with my kind of cancer do not respond to treatment, and then another percentage relapse early, and those two things are associated with a very poor outcome.  Somehow I more or less dodged that anxiety.  My tumor markers dropped into the normal range early in treatment and have stayed low since, and that is a very good thing, but as of March, I am no longer getting chemotherapy, so it is literally a waiting game.  I am patient with some things but not many, and tolerating the anxiety related to doing nothing is something that is a bit of a work in progress for me.  So wish me luck with that.  And with everything else as well.

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