For the first time since I was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer, I was given the results of my four-monthly scans via a virtual clinic. Usually, myself and my husband go into the Mater Public hospital in Dublin for a face-to-face encounter with the medical experts.
The consultant’s offices are handily located beside a coffee shop. We get a hot drink while we sit and wait to be called. We might be waiting half an hour, or two hours. It might be more. You clear your morning just in case.
The scans will have been carried out the previous week. A CT scan and a bone scan, which both happen on the same morning. More often than not, one of the scans will make me vomit, a reaction to the purple dye that is injected into my body so that the cancer will be rendered more visible on the scan. (I think that’s the gist of it, anyway. I have an extremely vague notion of these processes, which is how I like it. For actual facts about oncology scans, ask an actual radiologist. Some people close to me find my ignorance about the exact nature of the disease and the management of it astonishing. That’s the thing about individual coping strategies. They are surprisingly individual.)
The days when I don’t vomit feel like a victory. Gagging into a bag while lying prone in the scan machine interrupts the process, and even though the staff are always lovely about it, I hate being that person. For the other scan, I am injected with a small amount of radiation and asked whether there’s any chance I could be pregnant.
At this point, I look at an app on my phone to discover it’s 899 days since I had a period – so the chances of pregnancy seem rather remote. After this scan, I’m supposed to avoid my children all day, so as to not expose them to the radiation. Sometimes I forget about that and hug my daughters by mistake. Sometimes I forget I have cancer. I know it sounds hard to believe.
[ Róisín Ingle: We all have a death day lurking unseen. When’s mine? When’s yours?Opens in new window ]
The day before the scan results, I remember I have cancer. I allow myself to wonder. To be curious. I think about what the consultant might say. Whether they will say something other than “stable”. Stable is what you want. Stable means no new disease. Stable means the cancer cells are not on the move, they are not active, or fizzing, as I have come to think of it. From what I understand, but again I am not an expert, if you think of them in terms of mineral water varieties, it’s better if the cancer cells are still rather than sparkling.
Still and stable are good words. It’s always possible, though, that this time the doctor might say something new. I think about this sometimes, and about the other treatments that they might tell me are needed to deal with any new development. I think I do this because I want to make sure I am calm if at any point there is some different kind of news. I practise being calm. Two years ago, when I was told the cancer had spread to my bones, the shock was immense. I don’t want anybody or anything to induce shock in me like that again. I have no more shocks to give.
I used to send a text message after these conversations to my siblings and close friends, explaining that things were stable. I’ve decided I’m not sending these messages any more
At the beginning of this scan routine, when I was still getting used to everything, I used to give myself 24 hours before the meeting to wonder about what the consultant would say. Two years on from my diagnosis, it’s more like two hours. The aim is to get it down to a few minutes of wondering. I don’t want to waste time thinking about what might happen or what could happen. Might or could won’t change the outcome. It is pointless to wonder.
A virtual clinic meant I was on my own in a taxi when the call came. The voice on the phone, a woman, asked whether I was okay to talk, and when I said yes she said she would “cut to the chase”. I don’t know why but this sounded ominous to me. “Cut to the chase?” I asked. She explained that people usually don’t want any faff or small talk, they just want to know the results. I understood. So, she cut to the chase and told me as the taxi hurtled through a rain-soaked city centre that the scans showed no new signs of disease – that the cancer was stable. Still not sparkling. We chatted a bit more before I thanked her and said goodbye.
I used to send a text message after these conversations to my siblings and close friends, explaining that things were stable. I’ve decided I’m not sending these messages any more. I’ve told people that unless they hear otherwise, they can take it that I’m doing well and there’s nothing to be concerned about. I don’t need to be giving four-monthly reports if there’s nothing really to report.
In the meantime, I will just keep on living and occasionally wondering. Grateful to be here. Conscious that it could be different and that everything changes. Alive more than ever to the uncertainty of existence. Still. Still here. Still sparkling.