It’s all mad. Absolutely fucking mad. I did okay through Christmas, until about 30th December, in anticipation of this appointment with the gynaecologist due to the MRI I had. Spent that evening curled up with my boyfriend crying, and the days leading up to yesterday weren’t much better. Anxious, freaking out. Distracted. Wednesday night my belly was flip-flopping all over the place, doing somersaults.
So we went to this appointment on Thursday morning. Different medical centre I’ve never been to before. Sat for a while in the waiting room. That’s pretty horrible in itself. I hate waiting. And we went in. He asked me a bunch of questions and said if I don’t have the symptoms he was describing, he thinks it’s fine. He examined me, said it felt fine. I can have a hysteroscopy if I want to be super sure, but I said I didn’t want to put myself through it if he didn’t think it was necessary. He didn’t. So that’s the end of it.
I went from “shit I have cancer again and I’m gonna die” to everything just being fine. It’s mental. It was panic when I first got the letter about the MRI, and anxiety waiting for the appointment letter, and then sort of putting it to the back of my mind for a bit because it was three weeks away, and then getting anxious and scared leading up to the appointment, only for it to be okay. Which is great. But all that expended energy, all that stress, and what good did it do? It’s so pointless to worry about this stuff. It doesn’t help at all. If I hadn’t been worried, then the whole experience would have been fine all the way through, and the outcome would have been the same. Of course, that would make me a robot. I think I’m afraid of thinking positively in case the universe tries to prove me wrong. Again, worrying about tempting the fate I don’t even believe in. Worried about feeling hopeful and then crashing down if it’s bad news. Of course, you’re going to feel terrible when you get bad news whether you were being optimistic or not. So it’s best to be as positive as possible, probably, to have a calm and steady experience. But that’s now what cancer survivorship is. And figuring out exactly how to do that is another thing entirely. If you have an instruction manual, let me know.
It’s just crazy how up and down the whole thing is – something being wrong, or routine checkups, and anxiety, and panic, and calm, and panic again, and then hopefully good results, and happiness, and calm, and back to normal. What a rollercoaster.
And obviously it’s going to happen again. And again. I have yearly checkups due this month or next month. Pretty standard. Maybe I’m even getting used to them. I will still be a mess at some point, I’m sure. And I feel bad for the people I confide in during these times in case they worry, which is why I don’t talk to my parents about this stuff much, because worried is my mother’s default status. But I need to be open with one or two people, at least – that is my nature. I feel silly when it turns out my worrying was for nothing. But it’s better than the alternative. And for now, at least, it is all good news.
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