Whenever I’m feeling better, I don’t have as much time to blog. Work and freelance projects need to be completed, my garden plot needs attention, workouts are booked—and, of course, there’s fun to be had. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I think of the alternative that I’ve experienced while being sick—not being able to work, having to stay away from soil and gardening, not having the energy to do fun things. I’ve been so busy, I never gave an update on my prognosis going forward.
Basically, there’s a 60 percent chance that this cancer will come back within the next five years. When it does, it will probably come back in several spots in my liver. It’s too hard to get out at that point, so then I’ll just have cancer, and they treat it like a chronic disease with medication. It will buy me decades, they say. Since 60 percent is kind of in the middle, it’s not enough to give me preventative drugs and have me deal with the unpleasant side effects.
Steve Jobs’ experience with pancreatic cancer makes a little bit more sense now to me. He also had a neuroendocrine tumor and had a Whipple procedure. He eventually died after a liver transplant, so I assume that if the tumors came back to his liver, he opted for a liver transplant. (Since I’m not a billionaire or Frank Underwood, I don’t think this option is open to me, and I’m not sure if it’s the best option anyway.)
I haven’t thought about it much, because I haven’t wanted to. I wasn’t worried about the first scan, because it was so close to the surgery. Now that my second scan is coming up on Friday, I’m very worried. I want more time of being “normal.”
On Sunday, I was at the community garden, weeding the brick path, when I disturbed an ant hill. I brushed off the ants, but one got stuck in the worn fabric of my gardening gloves. It looked like its head was stuck in the threads and it frantically tried to free itself. I tried to help the ant, and for a while, I wondered if it was more merciful to crush it instead of possibly crushing a leg or antenna. I felt guilty: If only I hadn’t come to the garden that day, the ant wouldn’t be dying. After several minutes of both of us working together, however, the ant was free, and I was so relieved.
So yeah, I’m in a weird place emotionally.
For me, the question of the cancer coming back is not “if,” but “when.” People tell me to think positively and to focus on the 40 percent, but I’m a pessimist and I believe in trying to prepare for the worst even as I secretly hope for the best. The odds haven’t exactly been in my favor in the past. I was supposed to have six months of chemo for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which didn’t go away, so I had a stem cell transplant. Having a neuroendocrine tumor is rare, and having two types of cancer is pretty rare too. (Our late kitten’s condition of FIP was also relatively rare.) I keep expecting a rare good event to balance things out. I’m genuinely surprised when I don’t win the lottery.
Instead of winning the lottery, I would settle for not having the cancer come back. Definitely. You don’t get to bargain, but that doesn’t stop me from trying, and hoping, even as I try to steel myself for the worst.