Since the devastating diagnosis, five days have passed. It has been a strange time. Even the word devastating in the first sentence doesn’t quite seem to fit. My diagnosis is clear. Colon cancer. If untreated I will die soon, and it won’t be pleasant. If treated – well, I have no idea. The doctors are not that far yet. Tomorrow I will undergo a PET-CT scan, the results of which will shape the conclusions the Tumor Board will reach on Thursday. There’s also the in-depth histological analysis of the biopsy sample taken from the tumor during the initial colonoscopy. This should be ready by now, but I will learn the results only during the consultation on Thursday afternoon.
As a consequence, my life has continued normally. I went to the Heart of Europe Crystallography meeting in the Ötztal during the weekend, arriving there one day later because of my hospitalization but still in time to give my talk. Flucha and the children were with me, and we had a great time. This is how it should be, probably, but it’s also strange.
Most of the time, the cancer is a remote concept without practical relevance. I find it hard to take it seriously without a prognosis and a treatment plan. There are moments when I forget about it altogether. Then there are moments when I feel despair welling up inside me. I realize that I might die soon, before seeing my children off into their own independent lives. I feel defeated and deflated, though there is not the slightest reason for this at the moment.
I wonder how this will continue. If the prognosis is bad, I might lose all energy and motivation. I’m not a fighter for survival. I’ve always fought to win. If I was dropped from the leading group (or from my own expected pace) in a bike race or a marathon, I quickly gave up and suffered mightily until reaching the finish line. If the prognosis is bad, the finish line is death. How much power would I have to keep it at a distance for as long as possible?
I don’t really wonder how this will continue. This is another aspect that might seem strange to an observer if anyone were informed about my condition. I don’t wonder because I don’t work with incomplete information. What’s the point to read up on possible outcomes of colon cancers in various stages of spread? I don’t care. I want to know the updated diagnosis and the prognosis on Thursday. Until them, I’m quite relaxed.
It’s easy to be relaxed because I feel much better in some ways. With the iron transfusion, the B12 injections and the folic acid I take every morning, my anemia has improved noticeably. Walking up the hill after dropping the girl off at kindergarten doesn’t cost me nearly as much breath as it used to.
In other ways, I feel worse. Much more pain emanates from my colon where I suspect the cancer. Is this real, or is this in my head? Do I feel worse because I expect to feel worse? Do I just notice it more when before I tried to ignore it? Why would I feel worse otherwise? It’s not that I took a big step in the disease last week. And yet, I feel strong discomfort in bed and I have pain making normal moves. I also sweat during my sleep. Whether I did this was one of the questions I was asked repeatedly. Is this why I notice it now?
Until Thursday, none of this matters. There’s no pain and no improvement because there’s no reference. The reference against which everything will be measured will be set on Thursday during the consultation after the Tumor Board meeting. Until Thursday, I could be anything. There’s no way of knowing. I’m like Schrödinger’s cat, simultaneously dead and alive, a paradox that can be resolved only by an updated diagnosis and a prognosis. On Thursday afternoon, I will find out whether live or die.
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