Cancer Log 212: After yesterday’s bone scan, I came home and basically put myself to bed at 6 p.m. I made myself eat something, though absolutely nothing sounded good. I was so tired, for no good reason. Stress? I played video games and watched tv and read and posted a little and eventually Kevin put the kids to bed and came to bed himself, and then we watched a show together and then I spent a while catastrophizing to him about the bone scan.
My lower back hurts a lot these days, and I really do think it is probably just bad shoes + lack of exercise. But maybe it’s a slipped disc, hence the bone scan. But lying under the scanning machines (two 30+ minute sessions, and they didn’t have music on for either one, and I couldn’t fall asleep, so I spent it thinking unpleasant thoughts — I said all that to Kavi, and she said, “What have you learned from this experience? To ask them if they can put on music.”), I ended up not thinking about any of that, but instead fretting about what if the scan found bone cancer instead.
And that led me onto a delightful dance of even if they could do surgery for it and get rid of it, if I ended up needing to use a wheelchair, would it be possible to stay in our house? Maybe, with a chair lift to the second floor, but it would be a huge hassle in a host of ways and really, we would probably just move in that case, but I adore my house and I’m not ready to leave it yet.
(And what about my GARDEN? I know my garden will likely be too much for me at some point, and I’ve been mentally preparing to leave it in ten years or so and shift to something less labor-intensive, but not yet…)
And yes, this is all ridiculous and I normally don’t catastrophize this way at all; I’m sanguine by temperament. I tend to assume things will be just fine, which is in many ways my superpower, allowing me to go along in my over-ambitious merry way.
I think I’m just tired. Worn down, somehow. Too much time in hospitals lately. Too much constant work. The cold doesn’t help. I stayed in bed all evening, slept hard, and then Kevin actually got up to get Anand off so I could stay in bed a little longer this morning. (Usually I do mornings and he does bedtimes because I am a lark and he is an owl.) Best of husbands.
I need to get off the couch shortly and go get dressed and do some grading and then go teach, and after that is a long day — a SLF meeting with Karen, working on Portolan Project video / audio, then a walk up to the Carleton for a SLF-related fund reception for the Oak Park Community Foundation (that holds our fund which lets us accept stock gifts for the SLF). I had hoped to go to Cee Gee‘s gorgeous art reception in the city after that, but I’m so sorry, sweetie, I think I just don’t have the stamina today. 
All I really want to do right now is go back to bed until the results come back. Hopefully soon. It’ll probably be nothing. It’s usually nothing. Until it isn’t.
It was exactly 5 years ago today, February 12, that I got my cancer diagnosis — a routine mammogram had come back with cancer, entirely unexpected in a 43-year-old woman. Normally I’d be celebrating 5 years cancer-free today, but this bone scan nonsense is hanging over me. I resent it sucking out the joy that should rightfully belong to today.
Sorry for the bummer, folks. Hope to be back to my normal sanguine self soon. Look at the food photos instead. They’re lovely.