Cancer limbo

A little update and some jokes to cope

I am in this weird place right now where I don’t really know what to feel. I am healing up from surgery – it’s been a slow process but my strength is coming back. I can walk around and do household tasks, though I still can’t lift anything. My incision looks good all things considered. I still have to put frozen peas in my pants at least a couple times per day, so there’s that, but as I have been saying on repeat lately: it could be worse. They could be boiling hot peas, that would be way worse.

Mentally I am still sorting through all of the events that happened. I’m happy that my medical team worked fast, but it really didn’t give me any time to think about anything. It feels like in a blink of an eye I noticed the problem and then was prepped for surgery. That’s probably for the best for a number of reasons. For one, I know that this cancer can spread quickly, so time is of the essence. But a side effect of moving so fast is that I didn’t really get a chance to feel all the feelings. That happened afterward. And crying hurt a lot more with a 5-inch incision near my waistline.

So, that weird place I’m in, I’m calling it “cancer limbo.” It sounds like the world’s worst party game…and it’s actually a pretty crummy feeling to have right now. The lack of certainty to me is the worst part. Despite having a great prognosis, I still feel like I need resolution. Is anyone just “fine” knowing they had to have a disease removed from their body in a pretty extreme and violent fashion, and it may or may not still be there at least a little bit, but we’ll just have to wait and see? It’s like having a leak under your kitchen sink but you don’t want to check to see if your cabinet is rotting. Kind of. Weird analogy but just go with it.

Some encouraging news though, I have an appointment scheduled with an oncologist in a couple of weeks. I have so many questions about what happens next. Like, pages full of questions. I feel like I’m fortunate to be a candidate for surveillance only moving forward. But I also know I was stage 2 and now I’m stage 1. I know that there were irregularities with my lymph nodes (and with that, I understand that lymph nodes are weird little things that often do what they want). I certainly am not craving chemotherapy or another surgery, but would I rather be proactive than find out later that I am not okay? Absolutely.

So that’s my update. It’s not all sunshine and roses, but it isn’t all doom and gloom either. It’s something in the middle. Limbo.