Confident or Complacent? (Update #30)

As my journey extends and extends (Update #30: my last scans remained stable), I’m paying more attention to how my life as a long-hauler terminal patient evolves. The gravity of my original diagnosis triggered a huge amount of fear; fear of the illness, yes, but more so, a fear of indulging in a naive confidence in my own health ever again. My fear has served me in many ways, driving me to ask for all the tests, seek out all the experts, and advocate for myself as much as possible. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but I felt I wasn’t going to “beat” this cancer because I was confident I could, I was going to do it precisely because I was afraid I couldn’t. 

I sustained this fear for a very long time. When people would push positivity, I’d push back with my charming doom and gloom. 

Alas, it’s been over 11 years now, and slowly — ever so freaking slowly — I’m releasing my grip on the fear. 

One of the most difficult places to release fear is around scan time. The wait time between when I have the scan and when I meet with the doctor to discuss the results is basically just my fear in overdrive contemplating every threatening possibility on a loop (with breaks only for being an unreasonable moody bitch to anyone in my orbit). It helps hugely that the radiologist usually releases their report on MyHealth within a day or so, but still, nothing’s certain until I hear my oncologist’s review.

For this reason, I have always broken the hospital protocol which prefers to have at least a week gap between the scan and the post-scan appointment to discuss the scan results, and scheduled my doctor’s appointment within 48 hours after the scan. I have done this for over 50 rounds of scans. 

I recently got a message from the hospital. They scheduled my next scans, and the follow up with the doc 10 days later. 10 days?!? “Oh, helllll no,” I thought to myself as I started to pick up the phone. And then, out of nowhere, I set the phone back down. ”Maybe I can do this,” I thought.

The angel on one shoulder cheered. “Yes, Lisa! Do it! Believe the thing that so many people want you to believe – you’re fine, these scans are NBD!” The devil on the other shoulder said “Don’t get cocky. Stay fearful, stay vigilant.” 

Of course, maybe it’s the devil that’s tempting me into false confidence and the angel that’s protecting me from dangerous complacency. I don’t know. Clearly, I haven’t exactly achieved full confidence in my health, but it seems like writing a blog post examining whether or not I’m becoming complacent about it is fair evidence that I’m not? Overthinking FTW! 

Perhaps the line between confidence and complacency will always be a little fuzzy for me. I don’t think it’s possible to ever revert to my pre-diagnosis self who casually went for medical appointments (even a lung biopsy!) and dispassionately waited for results. But after over 11 years of white-knuckling 50+ rounds of scans, it feels good to experiment with a slightly different approach.