Tomorrow is an easy day...CT Scan of my chest and mammography...not too bad!
The staff at University Radiology is wonderful. They do their best to treat patients with respect and understanding. Tough thing to do when they are smashing what you have left of a breast between two pieces of plastic! And my test results are usually on my fax machine by the time I get back to the office...I can't really complain...well, I CAN...and I DO!!
One of the problems I have had with testing is the OVER reading...everyone is afraid to be the one to MISS something so they over read the films...and then we start the roller coaster of doctor after doctor reading them!
So these are some of the reasons I hate testing days...But the biggest one...what if they find something else!! What would I do? What decisions would I make this time? How do you tell your children...."here we go again"??
Someone once said to me, "It must be really hard to hear those words...you have cancer" I explained to them that I had diagnosed myself and it was just a confirmation of what we already knew so I didn't really experience that...but the really hard thing to hear...are your words as you tell your children and your parents that you have cancer. Some of the hardest days of my life were the days we told each of our children that I was diagnosed with cancer. Seeing the fear in your children's eyes, the questions you can not answer, the confidence you just can't give...
This is how we explain to people that cancer effects the whole family...no one walks away unscathed.
I see it in my 14 year old son as he sits near me and places his arm around me protectively...always gentle...always with some level of concern that he may hurt me...I like to think some of the daily fears have somewhat subsided...the fear every time he went to school that he would come home and I would be gone...again...for a stay in the hospital or that I was unable to get out of bed for weeks...but they are not too far in the back of his brain...they are not so long ago that they don't peek into his thoughts now and then! These are the difficult things for a mother...or a father. The fact that YOUR illness can cause your own child such pain!
Well, testing days come early in the morning...well early for me...10:00!! I will cross my fingers and say an extra prayer for myself...and an extra one for Nancy!
Thursday I will be back on track working this foundation!! We have SO many big things ahead of us!! The plans for our next fundraiser "Angels Among Us" are well underway!! Consider joining us, lending a hand, sharing your abilities to assist in easing the burden cancer places on a family...the only way we can...day by day!