The weather has turned colder here, but the smell of autumn isn’t in the air, so I don’t have to hit the panic button just yet. I say colder, it’s like a cool summer day… I think that today we got to 21C which isn’t that low but feels low after the days of 40+C that we were going through not that long ago.
It’s hard to believe that we are going to be heading into the cold weather so soon. September is a great time weather wise here in Ottawa, but it goes by so fast and then suddenly we are into the frigid weather and the winter time blues hit. I missed most of last winter because I was so sick with chemotherapy, but I’m going to be healthier this year I trust.
Having said that, I do have to write down something that freaks me out and I need to remember it for the appointment at the end of next month rather than shoving it to the back of my mind and forgetting about it. And if I write it down here and tell you, chances are someone is going to remember and remind me of it before my appointment – right?
I was laid low today at lunch time with extreme lower belly pain – the same kind of pain I would get pre June operation.
Of course, with ovarian cancer being a chronic disease, I’m freaking out that something is going on down there and that the cancer is active again. I can’t help it; my brain has just flown there. It was the same kind of twisting pain that I used to feel. I’m trying to hide the panic I’m feeling from Bronwen; why the hell should she know or worry about anything when it might not be anything at all?
And it’s not going to be anything is it? It was just a rare fluke of pain… I just need to do #2 or fart or something. But I remember clear as day the Doctor asking me in the previous check-up if I had felt any abdominal pain. Shite shite shite.
Once the word cancer is spoken over you it’s hard to think or behave in the same way anymore. Everything is tinged with the alarm of it coming back. The word ‘chronic’ reverberates around my skull. And the truth of it is that life can’t ever go back to how it was, when there was freedom from anxiety. I try to carry my faith into the face of fear, but most of the time I have to admit defeat. It’s the unspoken conversation. It’s the unseen truth. It’s there no matter how much I pray.
And I feel guilty at being so afraid, as if I am letting people down for having fears in the first place. I get secretly angry when people tell me to give it to God and not worry. I want to yell at them that giving it to God isn’t as easy as they say. I want them to stop judging me for failing because I’m scared. It’s hard not to worry when you don’t have the ability to see what’s happening inside your own body. I didn’t even suspect I had cancer; it never crossed my mind until the Doctors spoke of it. Why would you think of cancer?
Now it’s all I can think of.
Mummah Bookworm 