Today five years ago was also a Monday. It should have been my first day at the new job, but travel duties had already sent me to the US to attend a workshop at the University of Georgia. The flight out there took place on Sunday. It was a good start. It taught me about the flexibility expected and the compensation offered.
Today I’m celebrating my fifth anniversary as a detectorist. The CEO has invited me to his office, presumably for words of appreciation, but I’ve got the best possible present already. From your fifth year, you don’t have cafeteria duties anymore. No more cleaning of the tables after lunch, wheeling the coffee cups to the dishwasher and sweeping the floor of the crumbs from the breakfast rolls and croissants. Nearly everyone has to do this every half year or so for a week, but I’m free from it now.
Another anniversary is more immediate. I’m celebrating my tenth chemo session today, if celebrating is what one does with chemo sessions. I’m taking the drugs quite well, so celebrating doesn’t sound too absurd. But even if not. I would expect most patients in my situation who are less lucky also to raise a glass. After all, it’s only two more sessions to go, and now matter how well or how horribly the sessions go, one has to be excited about the end.
Before reporting for the infusion, I had a quick chat with the oncologist about the near future. What will happen once I won’t have bi-weekly appointments at the clinic? The doctor had no words of justified encouragement about my disease, but the next steps are clear. I will be released into relative freedom with a CT scan after the last session. Then, there will be CT scans every three months or so to monitor my continued good health – or detect fresh malignancies, depending on how positive your outlook on life is.
The looming CT scans made me think about my reaction to the one I received a few weeks ago. I couldn’t understand its point. How can anything grow when I’m in therapy? Now I look at this a bit differently. Why not continue the therapy if nothing can grow during it? I don’t suffer from side effects. I could live with this cancer as if it were a chronic disease – if it were certain that the cancer is in full submission during therapy. That CT scans are scheduled during and right after the chemotherapy program tells me that things are not that easy. The cancer is certainly suffering, but it hasn’t given up yet.
If nothing worrisome is detected after a year, further CT scans will be space more widely. Despite my generally positive outlook on life, this is not something I really expect. The diagnosing doctor was quite clear about the high likelihood of the cancer recurring after chemotherapy. There might be metastases in the liver or the lung that won’t be as easy to remove as the primary tumor in the colon.
Maybe I’m lucky. I’m not ruling this out. In fact, in a case of irrational optimism, I half expect this. The numbers on which my dire future is predicted come from patients most of who are in a worse shape than me. Most are old, most aren’t as active as me, some might worry themselves into a state of despair. I’m relatively young, strong and ready to throw more punches than the cancer can take. I might yet surprise my doctors and – even though I wouldn’t admit this – myself.
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