The future?

I don't know that I have a lot to say. I'm starting to feel almost normal again. I still get tired, but not all the time - it's just that it doesn't take much to make me tired. I'm just trying to be normal, but I feel like I should be doing more somehow. Like somehow this whole cancer thing should have made me want to run out and do something big - run a marathon, write a book, I don't know what exactly, but something.

If I don't make some kind of drastic change, does that mean that I missed something important, some lesson I was supposed to learn from this? That's what people seem to do after cancer, they quit their job to do something they always dreamed of or they decide it's time to climb Mt. Everest or something else major like that.

Is it wrong that my entire goal, to the extent I have any control over it, is just to live my life like a normal person and eventually forget that I ever had cancer? Not that I could actually forget that. And for now, I've got doctor's appointments every three months, I have to get the port flushed every month, and I don't know exactly how often we'll be doing follow up CT scans. Not to mention the hair that's there to remind me every time I look in a mirror. But at least there is hair now, that's a huge improvement over none at all.

Of course, it's hard to make big plans for the future anyway, when I'm still not sure I've completely accepted that for now, I don't have cancer. And my doctor seems pretty certain it's going to come back at some point. I would so love to prove him wrong about that, but he is the doctor, and presumably he knows what he's talking about. It is just a little bit scary that he would say that IF I make it to five years without a recurrence, we'd have champagne. I'm going to have to remember that, though. I wonder what they'd think if I showed up with a bottle of champagne at the doctor's office five years from now?

Good news!

I'm officially cancer free! I went to the doctor yesterday, nothing showed up on the CT scan, so for now at least, I have no more cancer. I go back to the doctor in three months for my next checkup. Now I just have to figure out how to live my life between checkups without worrying too much about the cancer. I think my doctor is convinced it's going to come back at some point, and obviously I'm worried about that, but I have to go on with my life as if it's definitely not, or I'm going to drive myself crazy with worry. I'm not quite sure how to do that though. Sometimes I can forget for a little while, but never for very long, and then it all comes back, and I start to worry again. I guess that will lessen some over time, assuming it doesn't come back.

The joys of waiting

I go back to the doctor on Monday. Hopefully everything will be okay. I'm trying to come up with my questions for him. I always feel like there's stuff I'm supposed to ask that for some reason I just don't come up with, or sometimes that I'm just scared to ask. I have my CT on Friday, so by the time I go Monday, he should have results. I know there shouldn't be anything that would show up on the CT, but I'm still worried. I suspect I'm going to be worried for a long time to come when it's time to go to the doctor.

On a more positive note, my sister had her baby last Friday, so I'm officially an Aunt! She had a little boy, Kasen, and they're both doing fine. He was 7 lbs 3 oz and 20 1/2 inches long, and that's even though he was three weeks early!

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll be here waiting anxiously until I go to the doctor, even though I know the chances are that everything's fine.