Reality bites when I least expect it.

I tell myself (and others) that I don’t often get what my friend MC calls “scanxiety.” I’ve had over 50 CT scans and MRIs, and I’ve come to accept that I can’t control the outcome of the scans I get every 90 days. But I can control my responses…yeah, well, to a point.

When I’m nervous, my colostomy reminds me with less control over my output.
This happens sometimes prior to a scan (my next one is Saturday), prior to showing my dog (like last Sunday), prior to an important meeting or presentation (just before my last performance review.) I always put on my game face, but my guts talk directly to my stoma, and it doesn’t lie.

This morning I couldn’t lie either when in a company retirement seminar, the presenter repeated for the 20th time, “because you’re investing for the rest of your life–the next 30 years, not the next 10.” Yeah. Right. That advice could work — if I didn’t have stage IV rectal cancer.

And as I struggled with the sudden tears, the voices in my head taunted back: invest for the rest of your life–and if you get 10 years, girl, that will be some kinda record. You better get a book deal if you make it that long!

The people who think only 20 or 30-year-olds have those kinds of thoughts, feel those instantly helpless feelings, and experience the sense of their lives being stolen away need to take a hard look around life out here in the real world of every cancer survivor. Those moments aren’t dictated by age — they’re dictated by diagnosis, by cancer.

Reality bites.