Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

I suppose it goes without saying that with a cancer diagnosis comes a lot of medical tests. So many tests, in fact, that one tends to lose track. When people who need to know ask, I refer them to my medical scribe, er husband, if he’s present, and if he’s not, I say something like “You’ll have to look that up. I can’t remember all of it.” In the latter case, I’m pinning my hopes on there being a reliable detailing of the pokes and scopes and imaging this body of mine has been subject to, floating around out there in the ether, able to be captured by a few taps on a keyboard. Whether or not this is, in fact, the case, those asking have always been satisfied with my redirection, as it were.

Tomorrow is Testing Day. A colonoscopy in fact. The method by which I was first diagnosed more than 12 years ago.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been asked by my therapist, my psychiatrist, and my physical therapist, as well as the occasional friend or family member, if I’m nervous or afraid. And every time my answer has been an almost flippant, “no, I don’t think so”, accompanied by a casual shoulder shrug, mine not theirs.

Well, I’m here to say: Wrong Answer. 

I am (and likely have been, since my “procedure” was scheduled a month or so ago) all of the above and more. I’m nervous, afraid, anxious, terrified, filled with dread, etc. ad infinitum. 

But here’s the thing, I really thought I was fine. Taking it all in stride.

My body has been telling me otherwise and I’ve been, for the most part, ignoring those messages. Until I couldn’t. Yesterday I could no longer stem the flood; my finger in the hole in the dike was no longer adequate.

I felt the pressure building throughout the day (what I should be saying is “throughout the weeks”), but I am just so darn good at ignoring, repressing, BS-ing and basically going about life as if there wasn’t this THING looming on the not so distant horizon.

It’s not pretty, the way this plays out for me. I’ll say up front it involves a lot of swearing and self-pity.

The first red-flag symptom for me is my breath. I have this thing, I’ve had it for 40 years, the World Wide Web calls it Hyperventilation Syndrome and in a nutshell, it feels like I can’t breathe. Alarm bells going off in my brain, “Not Enough Air!!” even though there’s plenty. It doesn’t happen all the time but when it does it can last for months and it’s exhausting. If not due to a serious illness or injury, hyperventilating is almost always holding hands with anxiety. Hmm.

Second red flag: overwhelm. As in, “I have too much to get done”, and/ or, “life is too much for me”. I find it interesting as well as inconvenient that, in DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), overwhelm is included in the list of synonyms for anxiety. Surprise, surprise.

By early evening I was waist deep in compulsive behaviors and, as a result, filled with self-loathing. By bedtime I found myself envious of others and, wanting, more than anything, a life different than the one I have. I warned you, not pretty.

But I’m told that all of it makes sense. To feel fear and not want to. To be reminded- again- that this disease has not only significantly changed my life, but that it can (and has) come back; that, like it or not, a certain amount of vigilance is required. Because, I’m told, people want me here.

This tangle of thoughts and emotion brings me here to this page, attempting to distill life’s complexities down to the reduction of words. And I find I don’t know how to end this… I think, because, like the medical testing, maybe there isn’t an end. That’s not something I can wrap up in some neat little word package. So, 

The End.

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