One down, twenty-three to go

We had the first of Dan's monthly surveillance checkups this week, He will have these every month for the next two years, and then slightly spread out for the three years following (pending nothing shows up in that time of course).

The Scans came back clean and the blood tumor markers negative (meaning they didn't show cancer activity in the blood. That's good, we want negative). So an 'all clear' for the month of October!

It was interesting, this week leading up to the appointment. I know, or at least I hope, that as time goes by and we're lucky enough to have the months continue without recurrence that the mind numbing, heart-pounding anxiety in the days, hours and minutes before hearing that 'All Clear" will lessen for me. That these appointments will become a new "normal" in our lives. But that seems like a long way off for me right now.

I hope that doesn't sounds negative...it's just I tend to deal with this level of insecurity and stress by kind of freaking out before I know anything concrete. It's just how I do it. For example...last Friday when Dan was out of town for the night I started obsessing about his original CAT Scan. See there are two ways to do one, 1) Drink the stuff that will act as a contrast agent the night before or 2) get an IV of the contrast agent while you are there for the scan. Since I knew that he hadn't drank the stuff the night before and I couldn't remember if he had gotten the IV the next day (and Dan wasn't at home to tell me) I somehow managed to convince myself at 1:00 am (without ANY knowledge to back this theory up) that they there had been a miscommunication and that they had done the CAT scan wrong. And that when we went to our appointment this week we would find out that the Cancer had really spread and we just didn't know it yet. See? A totally rational and logical line of thinking.

However, this kind of totally healthy and logical worry (aka anxious panic) seems to stop as soon as I do know something concrete, even if it's bad. I get a kind of creepy calm and my repressed type A personality comes out and I make spreadsheets and notebooks and manage appointment scheduling and clean the entire house and make flubber with my 3 year old. It is then that I have the ability to draw on the untapped wells.

Dan tends to deal with this kind of thing in the exact opposite manner...which in a way is actually kind of nice. It tends to mean that both of us rarely freak out at the same time.

So all of this is a really long way of saying that we had a really good checkup and that we could not be happier this month with the results. But the getting there? It continues to be a work in process.