Imperfect

In the past two weeks I’ve had followup conversations with both my chemotherapy doctor and my surgeon. These conversations have slightly complicated my good news and optimism. The news is still good! As far as anyone knows I am Cancer Free. So what’s complicated about that?

First of all, one of the things the chemo doc told me was that actually, thirty lymph nodes were “harvested” (weird word, unpleasant) rather than just a few. I still have tons left in my body, so that’s not the issue. Twenty-eight of the nodes were clear. Two had cancer cells. Hearing this, I became anxious, as you might imagine. No no, he assured me. This was totally expected. The news is still good. He wants a follow-up CT scan in a few months, but he told me that any future appointments aren’t as time-sensitive and can be rescheduled to fit around my life.

Our visit with the surgeon, a week later, was brief and followed a similar theme. Yes, those two lymph nodes had cells but they were probably the ones right near the tumor. There were nodes harvested from my hip region, further away, that were clear. There is the issue of a small hernia along the closed up part of my backside, of the kind which is really hard to do anything about surgically. So we’re just going to wait and see if it resolves itself. The surgeon wants a follow-up CT scan in fall, and a scope in a year. I suppose the hernia accounts for the discomfort I’m still experiencing when sitting for long periods of time.

“So as far as we know,” I asked worriedly, “I’m free of cancer?”

“Yes, as far as we know.” It was a relief to hear him say it, and yet the mood around us as we left and made the long walk back to the car was not one of elation. Now, in fairness, this was the late afternoon and our day had been fairly long by that point already. So Lori and I were naturally a bit low on energy. But I had thought that getting in-person confirmation like this would…maybe energize us a bit, y’know? Not that we’d be dancing in the streets exactly, but what I felt was much heavier than I’d imagined it would be.

As we walked, we talked over what we’d heard from the surgeon, and it felt to me that we were trying to convince each other that this was really good. I was puzzled and spent the next part of our drive home trying to identify what was going on in me, and with us.

Part of it is probably that the news is good but not Perfectly Good. Going from “lymph nodes were all clear” to “lymph nodes were mostly clear and it’s probably fine” was something of a comedown. And the not-easily-fixable hernia thing. I’ve been feeling well and wanted my recovery to be complete, which was probably not realistic in hindsight. And anyway, even if it was, it’s not like having a Perfect Recovery is going to put things back to how they were before this journey started. Still, I don’t feel ashamed of being a little crestfallen.

It’s also been suggested that after a year of ups and downs, being told “okay you’re good to go” might be hard to accept. That it might be difficult to trust good news after experiencing such bad news. I’m actually not very sure this is the case; I felt pretty good sharing my good news after the surgeon first phoned me. The idea does feel worth noting, however.

I’m more sure that Lori and I were also thinking that we’ve known people who got the All Clear and whose cancer came back. What if our good news is only a temporary reprieve? What if I’m right back in treatments and appointments in only a short time from now? What if, what if. We talked about this on the drive back from Winnipeg as well. The place we came to involved those words: As Far As We Know. We don’t know, so, in a way, we get to choose. Do we choose optimism? Gratitude? Faith? Or do I choose to withdraw inward, cultivate a bleak outlook and choose pessimism instead? I’m doing well these days, and it seems to me it’d be a terrible waste if I just sat around waiting for the good days to end. (Like falling into The Maw, from the previous post).

The thing is, we’ve had to go over this conversation and remind each other more than once since then. We’re trying to be upbeat and lean into optimism, but it’s not a one-and-done choice. This week I’ve started saying to myself “Today is a gift.” Not sure how long I’ll keep at it, but even when things seem chaotic or overwhelming, it makes me smile a little to remember that I get to be here today, doing whatever it is I’m doing, by God’s grace and the timely intervention of medical professionals.

It seems cheesy when I read it back to myself, but right now it’s working for me. Things are gonna be okay. Even if it goes bad again one day, right now, it’s like this, which overall is pretty good.

In a week from today it will be exactly one year since I got my diagnosis and this journey started. I plan to watch Howl’s Moving Castle, and later, write about identity or something. Also, tomorrow’s our 13th wedding anniversary! This, too, is a gift. (Which we plan to celebrate with some Boursin and mimosas 🙂)