Life WITHOUT cancer goes on...

Today was my horrific quarterly checkup. Same old, Same old.

Anesthesia in the nostrils and throat; cameras up the nose and down the throat; stick out my tongue and let him shove his rubber-gloved finger down my throat without gagging, ... the routine.

Even with the Xanax beforehand and all the relaxation techniques I could think of it still is ridiculously torturous.

But it is (almost) worth it when it ends in good news. This is what I wait 4 months for. This is what I worry about at least several times a week which is already an improvement over daily. This is the only reassurance, albeit temporary, I can get.

He found nothing suspicious in me at all. No cancer there!

He was very pleased with everything he saw which means I was even more pleased. He nonchalantly gave me the rest of the schedule in his mind:

Quarterly checkup in July;
CAT scan in September;
Quarterly checkup in November

If the CAT scan results look good in November then I get to reduce my checkup to twice a year rather than three times a year which is nothing but good news.

After my CAT scan results I can also go back to my beloved general practitioner and start talking about getting them to remove the catheter port from my chest. Another hope...

I also spoke to him about sun as we are starting to have beautiful days here. Unfortunately I still have to avoid the sun as much as possible and he was unable/not willing to tell me for how long. I will have to wear a total screen cream on my scar and my irradiated neck skin, cover it with Biafine in the evening and drink twice as much water when exposed to the sun. There had to be some not so good news along with the rest.

I got out of there feeling physically awful as always but with a big stupid grin on my face. Back home to sleep of the anesthesia for a while. Unfortunately as the anesthesia starts to wear off my nostrils start to remind me that they just had a camera pumped through them and they're not happy. But I really don't care and pain is nothing if not relative...

Today is March 13th, 2007 and I do not have cancer!