come indoors

Yesterday Jason and I watched a movie where one of the characters died of cancer. This set my emotions into overdrive because my biggest struggle since getting diagnosed is my certainty that this is how I will die, and worse, that it will happen relatively early in my life.
I am two days short of my one-year anniversary of completing chemotherapy and, like I explained to Jason, I feel no comfort as the treatment recedes into the past. Instead, I feel uneasiness, like I am on a conveyor belt moving slowly closer to the ten-year mark where the data stops offering predictions about my health. That's a scary point to be headed for. And now, instead of being ten years away, it is only nine years away. I want to go back, to the security of chemotherapy, to the security of using the most aggressive tools we have to stop myself from dying. But that is impossible for two reasons: 1. Physics, 2. I'm pretty sure the doctors won't just keep giving me chemo because I'm having a hard moving on. Maybe it's worth asking? I kid.
I was explaining this to Jason and he said, quite matter-of-factly, that he believed I was looking at it incorrectly. Not as in, "You need to be more positive in your thinking," but, "Your thinking is factually misguided." The logic behind his assessment is simple: ten years of continuing treatment is enough time to find out if anything new is growing.
That makes sense. It makes perfect sense. And I'd never thought of it that way.
Naturally, the alarm system in my bran started ringing, an army of neurotic overseers, jumping up and down, waving their hands wildly overhead, screaming their protestations in desperate hopes of keeping me frightened and as such, vigilant--"But it could start growing at the 7 or 8 year mark, and then you might not know! There is never any certainty! That may not be a totally accurate interpretation of those numbers which are a report on the likelihood of recurrence within ten years of finishing chemo, and not of years eleven through forever!" But a tightness released in my chest and I thought that maybe, just maybe, Jason's logic was a perfectly reasonable one that I could get behind.
Most of the time I'm just scared to relax, as though by staying fearful I am on high alert and therefore won't let anything slip by. I realize that this is impossible, that there is even a line of reasoning that says that keeping said vigilance is stressful and filling me up with inflammation that is a boon to growing cancers. The fight or flight part of my brain is working its magic, convincing the rational bits that staying in the terrifying wilderness with the sense that the beast might always be there is better because then at least it won't be such a fucking shock. But it doesn't do any good to wait for the beast. No amount of panicked searching over my shoulder will force it to reveal itself any sooner than the medical measures already in place. I feel like my frightened, quivering self has been invited indoors, and maybe here I can sit, and breathe a little more slowly.

the worst news

When I was newer to the experience of having cancer, I wrote here that the only news worse than cancer was More Cancer. Because at that point we were dealing with finding out whether or not I had More Cancer and it seemed that my capacity to deal with the disease would dissolve if it reached a certain measurement or existed over a certain area. But then there was More Cancer and we removed it and it was awful, but it was ok, because it was better to know about it than to leave it untreated. Ironically, there was some comfort in finding More Cancer because it felt like we had found All of the Cancer, and that was good and safe.
It started to seem like the worst news wasn't More Cancer, but that everything After Cancer changes and that life becomes permeated with a brittleness I struggle to explain. Other things--like giant medical bills and the disaster with my mother and not being able to have kids and how I was woefully underprepared for the paralyzing fear and deep sadness that have filled up the spaces in my brain that were once so efficiently managing doctors and treatment--came along to occupy my thoughts. I've continued to fear More Cancer, but I always place it in the future, somewhere after that frightening data drop-off that can tell me nothing about the efficacy of my treatments after ten years. For ten years I am safe, and come 2023 I will have reached the frightening precipice of cancerous possibility. In the meantime, these other things, with their immediacy, seemed scarier because they are problems I do not know how to solve. We have means of removing More Cancer, and I can manage them with a modicum of professionalism. 
And then two moles started to change in all the ways that set alarm bells ringing. One of them, once round, smooth, and a dark chocolate brown began to leak color into the pale surrounding skin, like a sponge dampening a towel on which it has been set. The smooth, small protrusion of it became bumpy and black. The other turned from a petite dark brown spot to a red-brown speck with a blurry tan border. I'd been trying not to be alarmed, to just pay attention to the changes so that I could talk to my primary care doctor about them at my upcoming appointment.
And then the larger, darker one fell off. I was looking at it after a shower to monitor changes when I touched it lightly to see if it still felt bumpy and at barely being grazed, it fell off. This is not a good sign. It also possibly a sign of nothing, but all of these things are also signs of Something.
I go to see the primary care doctor tomorrow. I don't know if he's planning on doing an excision so we can get these things biopsied (which is my hope), or if he's just going to look at them and set up another appointment for excision. But I'm getting more biopsies either way. Because we're looking for More Cancer.
I was right the first time, about the worst news.

***Update: It seems that all my worry was likely (thankfully!) for naught. I had both moles removed today and my doctor says that he is 99.9% sure they are nothing. You may have noticed that I was freaking out a little bit about that.