Monday, April 20, 2009

The fear of a recurrence

I was chatting to a friend of mine and we were discussing our various mental states and he is having a bit of a time at the moment and the strange thing is that, he doesn't have the offending organ that had the cancer in it as the cut that out and has been clear as long as I have. Like it is difficult to have Prostate Cancer if you haven't got a Prostate! There were no Mets and all was being monitored from very early on.

So - what has this to do with recurrence. Well it reminded me that I had the strangest dream last night and then came too realising that I'd had quite a bit of luck getting to where I am now considering they re TURBT on me the second time I went in for an operation - which was meant to be for biopsies. I have to say that memory made me shudder and then considering the grade of cancer I had, it was certainly noting short of miraculous that it went from CIS to clear pretty swiftly. CIS, Precancerous, Clear, Clear, Atypical. I could do with a clear this time as I haven't had treatment this past 4 months now. That would be really good and again reduces the odds of recurrence once again. I scared myself a bit worrying about a recurrence but figured that I am that much healthier now than I was then and that it would be manageable now and not a huge shock like when it was discovered the first time.

I've managed to put some distance between the feelings and my day to day life and have a job (if I want it) to take up after the next operation. It's all looking good but the nagging that it might recur are largely self generated and not based on anything at all. In addition I still attribute things like a slight cough or aches to being cancer - it is just the way your head deals with it I guess.

No comments: