While being on this cancer journey with my family I have come across so many new words, and with the majority of them I have absolutely no understanding of their meaning. Medical jargon is something that is anything but easy to understand and take in and is not made any easier as your brain spins from constant new information, questions you need answering and coming to terms with a loved one having cancer. I cant put all the blame on the professionals though for all these confusing words that I have heard this past year. I have come across so many inspirational individuals through social media and one word I hear often from these indivduals is scanxiety……. The first time I heard this it had no meaning to me what so ever and I just assumed it was a made up word. Well a year in to my journey and scanxiety is a bloody word and has loads of meaning to it, its something that even if your not going through cancer but still need scans you can still suffer with…. I had it a few weeks ago and its awful.
So what is scanxiety??????? Scanxiety is this thing that is basically what is called your nerves screwing up your insides while your waiting for your scan results from a CT or Mri scan. Its basically anxiety but with the word scan put in front of it when your waiting for scan results.
Anxiety is something that comes with the territory when you are travelling a cancer journey, that and the living of the unknown. Apart from having appointments or treatment dates you cant plan your life, as you can never tell from one day to the next how your going to feel or even if the treatment is going to work. Anxiety and the unknown are things that you have to try and learn to live with even when you’re in remission, as scans and colonoscopies play such vital part of kicking cancers ass!!!!
During a cancer journey you will have to have several scans and tests to diagnose the cancer, the stages of the cancer, to see if the cancer has gone, to see if the cancer has come back and these scans can go on for years. Another test that is used during bowel cancer and that is colonoscopies, this like scans can bring on extreme anxiety. This test is one of the few very undignified tests there are but is incredibly vital for cancer especially bowel cancer.
Around this time last year hubby was sent for a colonoscopy as he had been ill for sometime, I never for one minute thought he would come home and say that the doctor had found a large growth resulting in biopsies having to be done. Thanks to this test more scans had to be done resulting in some extreme anxiety including scan anxiety. OMG!!! The arguments and emotions in my house during those few weeks caused such an atmosphere and so much tension at points it got unbearable.
Anxiety obviously causes many emotions and there is one emotion in particular that really pulls on your heartstrings and mental health and that is fear!!!! This emotion I believe was the reason why one fag turned in to packets….. why one glass of wine turned in to bottles and why lack of sleep became the norm!!!!!!!!! Even to this day…a year later, sleep is limited as hubby still continues to recover from the crap his body has gone through the past few years!!!!
Hubby was diagnosed with bowel cancer, however this does not mean the end of all the tests and that anxiety thing. There still had to be an examination to see the actual position of the tumour and what the next step may be. The waiting around and all the tests and appointments living this what I can only describe as a nightmare was terrifying. People telling you to stay positive, people telling you not to get upset in front of Roger, people asking if your ok, people asking you how Roger took the news!!!!!!! All these questions when already having anxiety and fear going around and playing games with my body is not good, they make can make things seem worse then they are. The fear that this thing is growing!!!! The fear that its going to be to late, the fear the doctors are not moving quick enough, the fear of living the unknown the fear of my soul mate becoming that ill that he comes purely reliant on me… the list goes on and would increase daily encouraging the fear and anxiety to triple…..
A cancer diagnosis is not something that sinks in over night….. it can take weeks, months if not longer… hand on heart I could not say I have excepted my husbands cancer fully and yet he is in remission. Cancer sucks and as much as you try your hardest to continue to live your life as if you don’t its like cancer is wining however sometimes cancer will impact you if you like it or not… remission or not.
My hubby is in remission but the past few weeks anxiety has kicked in, it’s not been to bad but enough to cause a bit of an atmosphere. This week hubby had his first colonoscopy since his diagnosis!!! The appointment turned up during the holidays but we shut it in the cupboard and that’s where it stayed until the day of the procedure. As the date grew nearer, my head started to spin with…. Who is going to look after the kids? Who will take roger? What if they find something? How long will it take? Will the children need the day off school? Silly things going round your head that at the time are a huge deal, and being told to chill by hubby does not go down well.
I went to the hospital with hubby and the kids granddad come over to sit with them. All day the anxiety niggled inside me, over reacting to things, snapping at things when I should have just shut up and rowing but it takes two and this is what anxiety does to you. The procedure was delayed by 2 hours for a few reasons, resulting in me spending 3 hours in a waiting room with my anxiety playing games… wondering what the hell was going on and if they had found something. I was also not looking forward to the drive home, it was dark, I was getting really tired and I had no idea what state/condition hubby was going to be in, or even what I was going to be like if the results are not good!!!
The procedure went ok but we have the anxiety to live with for a few more weeks while we are waiting for the results!!!! Oh the bloody joys of living with cancer… remission or not!!!! Scanxiety sucks but will not win!!!!!
