Another good scan!

I am happy to report I had another PET scan on October 14th and the results were great!  The area in my sternum that has been showing signs of healing looked stable and no new areas of metastasis were found!  These scans are fairly anxiety-provoking for me.  As I’ve mentioned before, I have definitely had the rug swept out from under me in terms of bad news multiple times in the almost five years that I’ve been living with breast cancer and I think it will just take time for those hard times and bad memories to fade away and be replaced with the feelings of hope that a scan can be a positive reassurance in this disease.  Because I’m just not ready to face any more negative surprises (i.e. cancer has spread to liver, lungs, brain, etc. and more surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation would be needed), I tend to assume the worst going into these scans.  I also have noticed that I feel every ache and pain as scans get closer and worry that these are new spots of cancer popping up.  I am sure all of these feelings are fairly normal for cancer patients and I am confident that I will become more comfortable and aware of these feelings with each scan and hopefully become more hopeful with each good scan.

I am guessing my next scan will be sometime in mid-2020.  I am still assessing whether or not to stay with my new oncologist in my current clinic or try moving to the UW Hospital system, which is connected to my clinic, but bigger and much more inconvenient to get to.  Hopefully I won’t have any updates in terms of my health for a while.  I continue to tolerate the medications well and my appointments have decreased from monthly to once every two to three months.  I would say as a metastatic cancer patient, it doesn’t get much better than this.  I am starting to see a future again at least for the next five to ten years where I can see my kids get through middle school and possibly even graduate high school and for that I am so thankful.

Author: katiewardstage4

I am a 42 year old pharmacist and mother of two currently living in Madison, WI. In my spare time I enjoy running and baking. Starting this blog has enabled me to record some of my feelings about being diagnosed with breast cancer and has also given me the realization that writing for a living would be much more difficult than I would have guessed. View all posts by katiewardstage4