Tomorrow I go in for my every 6 month CT scan. I can’t even count how many CT scans I’ve had so far, dozens and dozens for sure. Tomorrow also happens to be the 2 year anniversary of my surgery that went nothing like planned. One of the two most traumatic events of my life.
Going in for a CT produces anxiety known in the cancer world as “scanxiety”. It’s a real thing. The thing is- my cancer was never caught on scans, I’d had an MRI for my back and back surgery before this and nothing showed so it’s a weird thing. What a CT scan would show now is if cancer spread to other areas of my body.
You see- cancer cells learn from other cancer cells. It takes one naughty cell to teach the rest. Chemo kills all the cells because it can’t really tell which ones are naughty (and this is why you feel so awful during treatment) and you hope it kills they naughty ones before they start multiplying. They learn from one another so one good cell sees a naughty cell and says okay let’s be naughty and then they go tell their friends and have a naughty party.
Chemo’s goal is to stop the naughty party. But sometimes naughty cells hide or they do a good job of teaching other cells and escaping the chemo. So you have to keep checking to make sure no naughty parties start up again.
In my situation, because the naughty cells were caught before they entered other organs and had “only” entered my lymph nodes the hope would be that they didn’t teach other cells to be naughty and so far it looks like that’s the case! So a CT scan now would be proof that no naughty cells had a party in my liver or lungs (two next stops for partying cells).
In addition the blood work I have done, specifically a tumor marker test called CEA would jump up if there was unwanted party going on that maybe a CT didn’t catch. I did not have my CEA done before the cancerous tumors were removed because if you remember I went into my surgery thinking it was all pre-cancerous so there was no reason to check a CEA.
My CEA has always been in the normal range so a jump in numbers would be indicative of naughty parties happening. They are also checking a few other numbers.
While I was told the likelihood of recurrence is low- it’s not zero. I’m also at an increased risk for breast cancer based off of family history and a genetics panel I did at my diagnosis so those are things they watch as well as the increased risk from the dozens of exposure due to my radiation therapy and other scans etc
So I get anxious. I have a physical and psychological reaction to certain parts of these appointments due to the trauma surrounding my surgery, diagnosis and treatment.
While I don’t expect others to understand, I hope it’s helpful to hear what it’s like so you can be informed, and perhaps be empathetic towards others you may know who have or will go through cancer treatment.
Survivorship is very hard. At times harder than active cancer treatment and I wish it was talked about more.
So I will do my part and be open in sharing what it’s like.
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