Last year I went to Wonderland with my girls for a cheerleading competition and I rode a huge, scary Roller coaster, aptly named the Behemoth. This most ridiculous of steel monstrosities drags you to the top of the world and then lets you plunge down, too scared to even scream, in a type of free fall torture where you spend three minutes of your life in terror until you finally reach the end and let out what remains of your shaky, panicky breath.
On that slow creep up to the tippity top, while my blood pounding through my veins, I remember thinking - I want to go back in time - I will not choose to go on this ride. I just need to go back 4 minutes. Okay 3 minutes will do. The anticipation of the plunge down, the build up of fear, that is the hardest part. The plunge down, that is when you make your peace with God, and figure you will either survive or be one of those splatted safety statistics.
That is what having cancer is like. You get some news, then you wait - to find out more, to have surgery booked, to have treatments booked. This last little bit, this lead up to radiation, the wondering about whether the recent biopsy would yield negative news, these weeks have felt like a slow, jerky creep up to the top of that Behemoth. I'm hoping that my anticipation of what radiation will have in store for me will be worse than the reality. My little medical village, the doctors, nurses, naturpath, nutritionist - all tell me how sensitive the tissues of the mouth are. How difficult this radiation is. Each and every time I'm told about how bad it will be, it feels like another creaky jolt upwards, just another foot higher. I don't even know when this roller coaster will start going down. Nothing has been set yet, so I continue to build up the anticipation, on hold, and pondering the bad things promised once I reach the top.
I can take solace that lately I have been getting good news lately rather than bad. I went today to get my biopsy results. Only to find out that my appointment was cancelled, and the Doctor was supposed to call me to tell me that she wouldn't need to see me until September. My biopsy was fine. I'll take that any day over the recent weekly appointments to check the little spots on my tongue that don't look quite right. And, late last week I heard that I won't need chemotherapy, that my cancer isn't advanced enough for me to be eligible for the clinical trial. More good news.
Those bits of good news, of progress in the right direction, I'm hoping that they will foreshadow a radiation marathon that is less unpleasant than promised. Until then I continue my creaky ascent - and try hard not to pack a backpack and run away to Mexico or Costa Rico.