10 Tips for Coping with Scanxiety

I have my every-three-month scans coming up on Friday, and I am already a nervous wreck. The week or so leading up to my scans I, like clockwork, come down with a nasty case of PSS: Pre-Scan Syndrome. It mimics all the emotional symptoms of PMS, with irritability, heightened emotions and general crabbiness, and lasts through when I get my scan results.

I don’t think scanxiety ever goes away, but as I've gone through more of these I have developed some tricks for trying to deal with the nerves. Here is a list of things that sometimes work for me.


1. Distraction

Binge watch episodes of your favorite TV show. Dig into a great book and get lost in the story. Go somewhere fun that you have never been before. Treat yourself to something that will keep your mind busy thinking about anything but those scan results.


2. Loud Music

Crank up the radio! Blast 80s music! Belt show tunes! It's hard think about scans while reenacting scenes from Flashdance, and I challenge you to feel anxious while singing "Don't Stop Believin'." Trust me, this is some magical stress relief. The science behind it probably has something to do with endorphins, but I am too busy right now rockin' out to "Pour Some Sugar on Me" to care.


3. Acknowledge It

When scan time is coming near, I feel like I need to wear a sign around my neck warning people that I am not responsible for the words that come out of my mouth. I get short with people and am likely to snap at them for no particular reason. Acknowledging what I am feeling and why can help to make it more manageable for myself and those around me.


4. Make Plans for the Worst Case Scenario

While I always hope to get great news, I find that sometimes I can lessen the panic by knowing what the plan will be if the scans are bad. Cancer makes you feel powerless and at the mercy of the disease. Having a plan in place can give back some of that lost feeling of control.


5. Spend Time with a Child

I've written before about the incredible ability that small children have to live in the moment. For them, all that matters is what's happening right now: this game of Go Fish, these orange slices, this third reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Spend the afternoon with a little one and the worries will drift away for a few hours.


6. Pretend You Already Got Good Results

This is totally delusional, but sometimes I can trick myself into imagining that – hey, I already got the results, and they were great! Sure, it only lasts for a few seconds, but those few seconds are a lovely relief from the anxiety.


7. Know When and How You Will Get Your Results

My oncologist only gives the results in person, so I know I will not hear anything until our appointment on Tuesday. For me, knowing this is a relief (although waiting the weekend is a bit of a challenge!), so I don’t sit by the phone all weekend wondering if I am going to get a call. Discuss with your doctor how you will find out the results so that you don't have the extra layer of anxiety, wondering when you will hear.


8. Help Someone Else Out

Sometimes, the best way to relieve your own stress is to help out someone else who is struggling. Help a neighbor, talk to a friend in need, shift the focus off of yourself for a while. It can be refreshing to worry about someone else for a change.


9. Meditate

There are many different strategies for calming the mind, such as deep breathing, praying, positive visualization and physical relaxation strategies. And if those don’t work….


10. Medicate

Let's be frank, depression and anxiety are cancer's annoying younger siblings who tag along and show up at the most inconvenient times. There is no shame in discussing these issues with your doctor and considering taking medication to help.


So, what about you? What are your best strategies for dealing with the dreaded scanxiety?




Originally posted at: www.curetoday.com/community/tori-tomalia/2015/02/10-tips-for-coping-with-scanxiety

Fear Less

The heart may freeze or it can burn
The pain will ease if I can learn
There is no future
There is no past
Thank God this moment's not the last
There's only us
There's only this
Forget regret — or life is yours to miss.
No other road
No other way
No day but today

- Lyrics from"No Day But Today" (from the musical "Rent")

Scan time is looming large on the horizon, so in addition to trying to take my own advice (see "10 Tips for Coping with Scanxiety"), I have been ruminating on the meaning of fear.

Why is scan time so scary? First, there are lots of little fears that flit around my mind, such as...

• I'm scared the IV will hurt.
• I'm scared the contrast drink will make me throw up.
• I'm scared that I might have some weird allergic reaction to the injected contrast dye.
• I'm scared that when they inject the dye and it makes you feel like you wet your pants, that I might actually wet my pants.
• I'm scared that I might breathe in when I'm supposed to hold my breath, or breathe out when I'm supposed to breathe in.
• I'm scared that I might reach to scratch my nose when I am supposed to be holding still in the scanner.

But, of course, there is the one fear, the real fear, the one really big fear: The scan might show that my medicine has stopped working.

I used to do partner acro, and my instructor described me as "fearless." While it was a nice compliment, it was completely inaccurate. I certainly was not without fear, it was just that my desire to learn and push myself was much greater than my fear of getting hurt. The thrill of flying was much stronger than the fear of falling.

Now, my fears have shifted. Everything boils down to the one big fear that the medicine has stopped controlling my cancer. If that happened, it would mean pursuing new treatment and facing new side effects. It would mean that one of my limited options is used up. It would mean facing the fear that my time on earth is much, much shorter than I would like it to be and that this disease will take me away from the life and the people I love so much.

I was never "fearless," but now I do have less fear. I have less fear about little things, less fear about speaking my mind, less fear about taking chances and less fear about what other people might think of me. I have one giant fear that trumps everything else and that puts it all in perspective.

My drive to get everything I can out of this life is much greater than all the little fears. We only get this one life (I think), so it only makes sense to grab on tight and get all the living you can out of it.



Originally posted at: http://www.curetoday.com/community/tori-tomalia/2015/06/fear-less

Breaking Point

My port had stopped working, so they needed to start an I.V. The first nurse had blown two veins and had called in a replacement who was on her way to blowing a third.

In the grand scheme of things, a few needle pokes were nothing. I had been through worse before, and there would be much harder days ahead. But in that moment, it was too much. In that moment, the months of treatment, the endless hospitalization, the constant nausea, and the helplessness were completely overwhelming.  I burst out crying. I can't do this anymore.

My sister, who had been sitting in the chair next to my hospital bed, stood up and walked over to me. She cracked a smile. "Remember that day when we were little kids and we were swimming at the lake, playing Jaws?" I stopped crying and looked at her, confused. She went on to recount in exquisite detail a day years earlier when we had been swimming and had gotten our legs stuck in the weeds and muck at the bottom of the lake and I had thought that a shark was attacking us. She ran around my hospital room, with her fin/elbow on her back, singing the theme from Jaws. Da-dum … da-dum… da-dum…

She had always had a knack for timing, and could change the energy of a room in an instant with her incredible ability to spin a tale. Somewhere between her imitating my 5-year-old squeals of fear and acting out our parents' response, I started laughing so hard the nurse gently said, "Could you please stop shaking the bed?" I toned it down to a hearty chuckle, and before I knew what had happened, the I.V. was in and the fluids were flowing.

Twenty-some years later, my sister is a midwife and every time I think of this story, I know how lucky those women are to have her by their side. In those moments when they feel like they just can't keep going, I am certain that she finds exactly the right words that they need to hear.

People ask me, "How do you cope?" I don't really know the answer, other than I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. But of course, it is not all my doing. I have had times when everything felt like too much and I can't imagine how I could go on. I have been incredibly fortunate to have people in my life, like my sister, who have helped pick up my foot when the next step seemed impossible.

~~~

If you read my last post, "10 Tips for Coping with Scanxiety," then you may recall that I just had my every-three-month scans.

And the results were great!

My amazing targeted med is still going strong after 16 months. There was one little hiccup, in that they found two small blood clots. To treat those, I will be giving myself twice daily shots of a blood thinner for a month, then once daily ad inifinitum. All these needle pokes made me think about the above "Jaws" story from my childhood cancer treatment, and how the cumulative stress of illness can make something as simple as a an I.V. push a person over the edge. Right now I'm feeling healthy (relatively speaking), so I'm fine with some extra needle pokes. But it is easy to see how quickly a lot of little nothings can add up to too much.

Everyone has a breaking point. If we are lucky, we have someone who can guide us through it and help put the pieces back together again.



Originally posted at: http://www.curetoday.com/community/tori-tomalia/2015/02/breaking-point

Scan Results=Yay! Blood Clot=Boo!

For those of you who follow my scan/doctor appointment schedule (which is amazingly sweet, by the way) you would be passing the time this weekend patiently waiting for scan results on Tuesday. And you would have been almost as shocked as I was Friday afternoon when my phone rang, and the caller ID showed that it was the cancer center. By the time I answered the phone and heard my oncologist's voice, I was trembling. Why in the world would she be calling me when we had planned to discuss the results at my appointment on Tuesday?

She quickly said, "Don't worry, your scans are fine. But we found a small blood clot and would like to be safe and start you on heparin injections. I'm so sorry you will have to give yourself shots."

Me: "But my scans are fine?!? Okay, when do I start?"

I don't love the idea of twice-daily shots, but I like it a lot better than cancer progression!

I went in to the clinic Friday afternoon and learned how to do the Lovenox shots. So far, they are no big deal, and I don't yet have the lovely bruises on my stomach that I was told to expect. The nurse commented on how calm I was giving myself the shot, and that most people's hands shake the first time they do it. It's all perspective; when the doctor called I was sure I was getting terrible news. In comparison, these shots are no big deal. Funny what you can get used to!

So, I continue on my amazing targeted med Xalkori. 16 months and counting!

Cancer: the World's Worst Houseguest

You are sitting down to a nice dinner when you hear a knock on the door. That's strange, I wasn't expecting anyone. You open the door a crack to see who it is. He shoves the door all the way open and barges in.

It's Cancer, the World's Worst Houseguest.

He walks right past you and leaves muddy footprints all over your carpet. You are in shock. You didn't know there was any chance of him coming over. It was the last thing on your mind, but here he is, lounging on your couch like he owns the place. Who is this? What is he doing here?

Once the shock wears off, you try to talk to him. How long will he be staying? Why did he pick you? He just shrugs, rolls over and goes to sleep, snoring loudly.

You start to question yourself. If only you hadn't left the porch light on, maybe he would have gone right past your house. The neighbors whisper that you never should have bought that welcome mat. And the charming walkway lined with flowers just encouraged him.

The visit drags on and on. The days turn into weeks, and before you know it he has been there for months destroying your house and turning your life upside-down. You are exhausted because he wakes you up at all hours of the night. He walks around in slippers and thick socks, saying that your floors hurt his tender feet. He has puked on the carpet and clogged up the shower drain with his constantly shedding hair. He alternately eats everything in sight and complains that your food tastes weird. You notice that a few friends have stopped coming over, and you know that it is because they can't stand being around this guy. You can hardly blame them; you don't want him here either.

However, you also discover that you have an amazing community that offers to bring meals, help out around the house, and even drive your nasty houseguest all over town to his various appointments.

As time goes on, you meet other people who have experienced this terrible houseguest. Yeah, the same thing happened to me. He showed up totally unannounced and made me adjust my whole life to accommodate him. You discover that you now have membership in a club that no one wants to join, and soon you are swapping tips with others. When he kept complaining that my food tasted funny, I got rid of the metal cutlery and started serving it with plastic. He said it tasted much better! You find that together you can even laugh at his bizarre quirks.

After a while you start to get used to him hanging around, but you never forget that he is there. When you are feeling relaxed and happy, you hear him run to the bathroom. Your quiet book and cup of tea are interrupted by his hacking cough from the next room. He is always present.

Finally, after a seemingly endless string months, you kick him out of the house. You celebrate your freedom, but even then you find yourself checking the closets, peeking into dark shadows to see if he might be hiding somewhere. You think you hear him following you late at night. And every few months you get a message from him. He's considering stopping by again for a visit, but he's not sure. You peek out the window and think you catch a glimpse of him turning the corner.

One thing is certain: your life is never the same again after you receive a visit from the World's Worst Houseguest.


Originally posted at: http://www.curetoday.com/community/tori-tomalia/2015/01/cancer-the-worlds-worst-houseguest

Breathing Easy

All is well in scanville! I've just passed my one year mark on the wonder drug Xalkori, and now I can breathe (relatively) easy until my next scan in three months.

Speaking of breathing, here is one of my favorite lung cancer infographics. 

At 3 pm EST today I will be participating in the WEGO Health Activist Twitter Chat (#hachat), which today is focused on lung cancer. Lung cancer bloggers Linnea Duff (@1111linno) and Samathan Mixon (@mixon_samantha) will also be participating, and my fellow ROS1er Janet Freeman-Daily will be guest hosting.

We will be addressing these questions:

• Q1: Why do you share your lung cancer journey online? What motivates you to write a post?
• Q2: What kind of info do mbrs of online lung cancer community want? What messages do you try to convey?
• Q3: On which social media sites do you share lung cancer info? How do you choose what info to share on different sites?
• Q4: How/where do you find content about lung cancer that you want to share? What makes content you find share-worthy?
• Q5: How has the lung cancer information you share changed over time?
• Q6: What reactions do you get to your lung cancer blogs and social media posts? What content gets viewed or “liked” most?

Please join us! It should be a lot of fun. 

Superstition

"Security is mostly a superstition."
- Helen Keller

I like reason and facts. I question everything, and always want to see evidence. I think I am a pretty sensible, level-headed person.


And yet....

I wear the same socks for each CT scan.

I wear my favorite shirt for each appointment where I get scan results.

I wear two "charmed" necklaces every day.

And I have saved every empty bottle of my cancer drug Xalkori.

Saving my first bottle of Xalkori didn't seem so strange, since it was such a momentous occasion when we found my driver mutation and I started taking this magic medicine. And then I kept the second bottle so the first wouldn't feel lonely, and by the time I got the third bottle I couldn't bring myself to throw that one away because the medicine was working so well. So now here we are, a year later, and I have over a dozen bottles cluttering up the shelf. Ridiculous, yes, but that totally irrational part of me thinks that maybe if I get rid of the bottles the medicine will stop working.

Superstitions make sense, really. When it comes down to it, we actually have no control over anything that happens in this life, as much as we like to think we do. The road twists and turns as we travel along, and all we can do is hold on and keep moving forward. Little trinkets and good luck charms give us something to cling to as the winds of chance try to knock us off our feet.

It's scan time again, which has me feeling extra punchy and on edge. On Friday I will drink the oh-so-yummy contrast solution then lay myself at the feet of the imaging gods as the machine takes pictures that determine my fate. On Tuesday, the wizard will reveal my future.

If I have snapped at you or been irritable in the past few days, please excuse me. Scanxiety is a nasty beast. Excuse me while I go curl up with my shelf of empty pill bottles.

Changing my name to NED

As I lay in bed this morning, my semi-conscious mind tried to decide if I was ready to face today, a day which entailed finding out if my cancer was, in fact, starting to invade my kidneys as was suspected from my last CT scan. As usual, Jason was already up and taking care of the kids because, well, because he is awesome and because my sleep needs are now much greater than they used to be. I heard him bound up the stairs and say into the phone, "Let me check if she is awake." I was, and I was greeted by the cheery voice of my wonderful PA. "It's good news!" Not only are my kidneys clear, but all the bits of tumor that are left in my lung are dead. There is no evidence of cancer living in my body. I have achieved the holy grail of stage IV cancer, NED (no evidence of disease).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And it is Jason's birthday! He is quite the good luck charm. One year ago today I got the results of my first scan after starting chemo, the scan which would tell us whether or not my cancer would respond to treatment. Needless to say, a very important and very terrifying moment. 

Two years in a row of great scan results on your birthday, Jason! I got to double celebrate with this awesome crew today.

If you are not an inhabitant of Cancerville, you may be wondering why my CT scan from last week would show something different than the PET from yesterday. It helps me to think of the CT scan as a high-definition camera that takes black-and-white photographs of the inside of the body. It can detect every lump and bump, but it can only show what it looks like, and can't tell the difference between a live or dead tumor, scar tissue, cysts, etc. A PET scan involves injecting the patient with a radioactive sugar substance. It goes through the bloodstream for about an hour and every part of the body that eats up sugar will glow when the patient is in the scan machine. Cancer gobbles up sugar, as do muscles, which is why you are not supposed to engage in much physical activity for a day or two prior to a PET scan.

A fellow cancer patient told me that he was advised not to text while in the prep area for his PET scan. I thought about this briefly while the stuff was going through my veins, but I though just a little bit of time on my phone wouldn't be a big deal. Yes, there was a "no phones" sign, but I thought that probably just referred to talking on your phone. And technically I only replied to one text, the rest of the time I was just scrolling and reading. Fast forward to the end of my scan, when the technician slid me out of the scanner machine and said, "Were you using your phone in the prep?" Uh, yes. "Are you left-handed or right-handed?" Left. With a curt nod she turned and walked out of the room. A few minutes later she returned and said, "I just talked with the doctor. The muscles in your left forearm are lighting up, but he said that is just from scrolling on your phone. You REALLY aren't supposed to use your phone in there!" Busted.

This was my view as I drove off to my PET scan yesterday. 

Such a lovely bunch of well-wishers!

For clarification, these wonderful results don't really change anything. I still have to take my amazing targeted med twice a day (THANK YOU XALKORI!), and I still have to deal with the less-than-awesome side effects of the drug, and I still have to go back for scans every three months, and I still know that at some point the cancer will likely develop a resistance to the meds. Unlike many other cancers, such as breast and prostate, there are no markers that you can track from a blood test. I can't see if my numbers are going up or down as an indication of the state of my cancer. With lung cancer, the only reliable way of knowing (currently) is to wait until it is big enough to grow into a tumor visible on a scan. So, it is quite possible (maybe even probable) that there is some cancer left if there. But, for now, it is just fantastic to know that there is no visible cancer in my body.

And for the punch-in-the-gut portion of this post:

I asked Zander what he wished for when he blew out his birthday candles. 

"I wished that you and Daddy would never be dead." 

A strange kind of boogeyman enters your world when you become a cancer family. I've learned that the thing of nightmares can come from within my own body. We all face the same impermanence and chaos of the world, but a journey like this forces you to come face-to-face with mortality in a way that many others can ignore. I miss that ignorance, and it makes my heart ache to realize that my children will grow up never having known it.

I'm NED for now - and hopefully for a long, long time - but I'm forever changed by this awareness. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly makes me view this brief blink of time we get on this earth in a whole new way.

That's Great It Starts With An Earthquake

I was jolted awake by Michael Stipe serenading me with "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" and immediately remembered my sister telling me she had been listening to that song some 20+ years ago when our mom called to tell her I had been diagnosed with childhood bone cancer.

Really poor song choice for my alarm this morning, a day when I was waiting for scan results.

Two years ago today I had just returned from the AATE conference, where I had met all sorts of impressive folks, the leaders in the field of Theatre for Young Audiences, and had received an award as one of the up-and-comers.

And today I spent the day at the cancer center.

The results of my scans were mixed. The lungs look stable with a bit of shrinkage on the remaining spots (yay!) and the brain scan was clear (big yay!). The questionable area was my kidneys. There might be something suspicious on them, but they consulted with several radiologist and they couldn't agree if they were really seeing anything or not, so I am heading in for a PET scan next week to get a closer look.

They take away was don't panic yet. It might be nothing. I'll be busy celebrating my wonderful son turning 6 this weekend, so I will keep myself occupied with that. It was this same weekend last year that I was waiting for my first scan results after starting chemo, and I got pretty remarkable results on Jason's birthday (which is just 2 days after Zander's). I hope Jason gets another great birthday present this year. And maybe next year let's plan the scans on a different week.

~~~~~
This song has been going through my head, after the terrible news about Robin Williams. (He was my second choice for my Make a Wish when I was a kid, but Winona Ryder agreed - and we had a lovely day.) What a remarkable actor and comedian, and what a terrible loss to us all. My heart aches for his family and those close to him. I sure hope heaven is real, because he is someone I would really like to meet someday (but not for a long time).

The best of times is now.
As for tomorrow,
Well, who knows? Who knows? Who knows?
So hold this moment fast,
And live and love
As hard as you know how.
And make this moment last
Because the best of times is now.

What Are The Odds

I've been reading a book as research for a wonderfully terrifying endeavor Jason and I are working on* and I came across a section that talks about the poor odds of a small business succeeding.
*More on this soon, I promise! There is lots of good stuff a-brewing.

I couldn't help but chuckle.

That's supposed to scare me? You wanna talk to me about long odds? So I did some digging. (Okay, googling.)

For every 10,000 kids in the US, 1 or 2 will be diagnosed with cancer each year.
That's a 0.01-0.02% chance.

Let's narrow it down to osteosarcoma, my childhood cancer. In the US, there are about 5.6 diagnoses per million people each year.
That's a 0.00056% chance.

About 2 out of 10,000 people will be diagnosed with lung cancer before the age of 40.
That's a 0.02% chance.

Now recall that I have a rare driving mutation, ROS1, that occurs in about 1-2% of non-small cell lung cancer.

Then there are the gulp-worthy stats about lung cancer survival times, and I have already (THANKFULLY, CONTINUING TO KNOCK ON WOOD) made it to the good side of the median.

For something more fun, let's consider the odds of having identical twins: 3 in 1,000, or about 0.3% chance.

The odds of all of these things happening to the same person?!?

All of this is to say that when I read that 80% of small businesses fail within a year, I see that 20% are still around a year later! Those are some of the best odds I've dealt with in a while.

I don't mean to be cocky, it's just that odds have continually proven to be meaningless to me. Also, tomorrow is my 3-month scan, so I think the nerves are making me punchy. Fingers crossed for good results on Tuesday! Let's keep beating the odds.

The Other C Word

This weekend I saw an excellent production of To Kill a Mockingbird (seriously, if you live in the greater Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor area, run, don't walk to get tickets).
 
It was full of beautiful, powerful moments, but Atticus' lines about courage really jumped out to me and have been bouncing around in my mind ever since he spoke them. He explains that courage is

"knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

I've often been told how brave I am in this cancer journey (and in my first). That has never made much sense to me, as I'm not doing any of this by choice. I would much rather NOT have cancer, and NOT put my family through all of this. Sure, great life lessons, live in the moment, blah blah blah, but I would really prefer not to have cancer at all. Really. REALLY. Really really for real.
 
I am, however, surrounded by some very courageous people. Perhaps the most astounding and least acknowledged are the caregivers, the partners, the spouses. They voluntarily attend countless appointments, put up with scanxiety, hold the patient's hand while awaiting daunting test results, and take care of rambunctious munchkins when the patient needs to sleep. (That last one might be specific to me.) None of this is required; it is not their bodies that are resentful hosts to this beast, yet they do it willingly. That is courage.
 
The other group who knowingly walk into this fray are the doctors and scientists. Sadly, I need to qualify this since I have come across too many that have the - usually unspoken, but not always - belief that people with stage IV cancer are not really worth the trouble and should be sent home to die. Thankfully, there exist some doctors and researchers that dare to dream. I'm talking about the handful who choose not to give up on us, even when the odds of living a long life with metastatic cancer are, well, pretty close to nonexistent. These are the rockstar docs (I've become a bit of a fan girl for some of them). They face hopeless situations with the crazy belief that these people are worth fighting for. They believe that with enough work, seemingly impossible things just might come true. And even if they don't, they will continue to try their damdedest to find a solution.
 
As Atticus said, 

"You rarely win...
 
...but sometimes you do."

If I Only Had a Brain

I went Off to See the Wizard, and believe me, Oz is really something. He answered all my questions and explained things I didn't even know I didn't know. And he insisted we take a closer look at my brain.

So we did. And the results?

I have a brain, and it is unremarkable.

Hooray!!!

Xalkori is an amazing drug, but its Achilles heel is the brain, since it cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. If one single stray cancer cell makes its way up there, the cancer can flourish in a medicine-free environment. Half of the people whose cancer progresses on Xalkori have their first progression in the brain.

My wizard insisted that I have an MRI of the brain, since I have only had head CTs up to this point, which do not reveal the same level of detail. His philosophy is to catch the little buggers when they are tiny to keep ahead of the cancer rather than waiting until they are causing symptoms. Pretty smart, I'd say, but unfortunately not how things are typically done.

Hopefully the team in Oz will help to change the status quo.

The Meaning of the Median

Eight months ago today I was lying on the couch eating Trader Joe's fish sticks. Those days, I was so short of breath that sitting at the dinner table and eating was a lot of effort, so I took most of my meals on the couch. The phone rang, and I got the terrible news: the biopsy confirmed that I had cancer.

Eight months.

I am officially at the median survival time predicted by the (most likely outdated) statistics. 

What better day than today to dust off Stephen Jay Gould's great essay, "The Median Isn't the Message," writing that is often circulated among cancer patients, with good reason. He does a great job of explaining why he felt confident that he would outlive his cancer's median survival of eight months (and he did). He reminds himself, and us, that the median tells us 50% of the people with this disease will live longer than that point. The right tail of this graph can stretch out for quite a ways, and based on reports from several lung cancer patients who have lived with this disease for years, it does.

I hope to keep pushing further and further into the right side of the graph.

I have a scan on Friday and I have come down with a nasty case of PSS: Pre-Scan Syndrome. It mimics all the emotional symptoms of PMS, with irritability, heightened emotions, and general crabbiness. The logical side of me always grapples with this weird fear because nothing is actually different before and after the scan. The event itself doesn't change anything, only my knowledge changes. And yet, it still freaks me out.

I will get the results on Tuesday. Fingers and toes crossed for a good report.