Saturday morning

Another CT scan is history.

For some reason, I was really (I do mean really) nervous about this one. And, of course, I don't have the results yet, so the nervousness is still there in the background. I see Dr. R on Monday. I don't really have any concrete basis for the nervousness - or increased nervousness (since I guess I have been nervous every time, just much more this time than the last two times). I've now had 4 CT scans: #1 was before the surgery - Lord only knows what it showed! #2 was a year ago, April 2010, right after all the treatment. I was probably least nervous then, but still a little nervous. Still I figured if any scan was going to be clean, that would be it. #3 was October 2010. I was more nervous before that one. It turned out fine. And now #4 April 2011.

I think part of it is that I've become increasingly aware of odd and end aches and pains here and there in my body. Arthritis. Trigger finger problems. A cold that lingered. Continued tiredness. I think maybe, probably these things have been with me over the past 18 months since the cancer diagnosis but I wasn't noticing them as I had bigger issues on my mind. But there is that little ugly worry in my brain that there is something newly wrong. That my immune system is not only not snapping back, but not quite right.

When I impel myself to consider it all rationally, I think that what may be going on is that I have become invested in life again; I've put my stake back in its ground with a standard that reads: Life is good and I am not ready to give it up. A year ago, the first post-treatment CT scan, what did I know about post-treatment life. I was on its cusp, and just so grateful to be alive at all, to have made it through the treatment. Six months ago, I had begun to live, begun to experience taking life "for granted" but still remembered how close I'd come to the dark places it holds. Now, 18 months after diagnosis, one whole year after treatment ended, one entire year of "No Evidence of Disease," I have allowed myself to have a vested interest in more than today. I have allowed myself to live without remembering to be grateful for that fact once an hour. I guess I think that's both good and healthy and not so good. Good - because it means I have permitted myself to again live with hope - hope to be around and in my children'a lives, hope to watch my grandson grow and thrive and see my new grandson come into the world, hope to finish building my boat, to sail it, to take more classes at the Woodenboat School, hope to make a difference in the world... But in some ways, at least, not so good - because as the cancer diagnosis 18 months ago brought home, there are no guarantees and I do need to, WANT to remember that each day is all there really is, each day is the gift itself.

I have pretty much stuck to an approach I decided to take early on, which is to avoid negative "What if..." thoughts, as in, What if the scan was bad? What if cancer came back? What if... I have become pretty good at avoiding those What Ifs. That means my fears are generally unshaped, non-specific and generic. Fear. Anxiety. Nervousness. But at the top of the roiling worries is the rational thought that cancer could come back. I just don't linger there. I acknowledge it and, I guess I think that if that should happen, I'll deal with it then. Maybe it's magical thinking, it probably is. But I sometimes feel - feel more than think - that going to those negative What If thoughts could unleash something in my body, literally as in bio-chemically, and give rise to, or create physiological conditions for the very thing that is feared (stress cause cancer?). Better to do all I can to make my body's "soil" be filled with hope, even joy.

Anyway, there's where I'm at.

Ella, David and I completed "Intermediate Obedience" and we promptly signed her up to do it again. David and I need it anoither session as much as she does. Starts in May. Ella and I have made it back to the park, last weekend and today. Birds! Birds! Birds! We saw a pair of Canada geese fly in low, just a couple of yards above our heads, this morning and land on the pond. The Mallards appear to be all paired off, mostly not obvious but around. Red winged blackbirds. Black capped chickadees. I saw leaf buds dotting the mushroom brown bare branches of a brambly bush with bright green. Spring gives me hope.

Peace.