LIVE-ing with cancer

So I wound up going into "scan land" for the last couple of weeks and found myself avoiding this blog... it's weird, I'm now at the point where I am to follow up by getting a CT scan every three months and a simple blood test once a month, and a couple of weeks ago I got my first one, and also got my first taste of what my life will be like for probably the rest of my life, a taste of what waiting to see if anything is ever going to come back will be like, and to put it bluntly, it's a mind f*ck. My doctor keeps telling me to forget cancer, to stay as far away from it as I can, but so far I just don't know how that's done. My scan initially showed an inflamed lymph node in my chest (WTF?). I had to have a subsequent PET scan which says that I actually have two tiny lymph nodes in my chest which are too small to be diagnosed and which probably means they are nothing at all and that otherwise I'm clean, "no evidence of metabolic activity" in my cells, which is a good thing, no, a great thing. So now that all that mechanical part of life after treatment has gotten under way I'm trying to figure out where my heart goes after treatment. I have been very ambivalent about writing about the scans, first off because the first thought that crossed my mind when the nurse rattled off something about a lymph node and getting further testing was that I was going to disappoint people, people that care about me and were so lovely in wrapping their arms around me when I shared the good news about my prognosis, and I felt that maybe I celebrated too soon and jinxed myself (I know, I know...), in essence I was ashamed that I might be letting people down, I couldn't bear the thought of my family going thru anything else and I was simply afraid.

I'm the kind of person who used to skip any cancer related articles I ever came across in a magazine because somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I'd be calling something bad upon myself by reading them. The kind of person who felt awful and awkward whenever I heard of anyone being diagnosed with it, and was basically very uninformed. But now I don't know exactly where I fit in, I know more about the disease than I ever thought I would and I like to think that I have licked it, so do I stay away from it as the doctor says? or do I follow my instincts in trying to reach out to those in my tribe? I know the American Cancer Society recommends that anyone who has gone thru the experience stay away from volunteering and/or trying to do something related to cancer for at least two years after the end of treatment, why exactly is that? and why two years? that's also the time period where recurrence is most common, do they know something I don't know? is it some kind of twisted evidence that you bring it upon yourself by "dwelling on it"?

Jesus, I just want to be clear headed about things, it's so hard to keep your head out of magical thinking... So when I ask myself what do I know about what I've just lived through, the answer is that I have LIVED through it. Cancer sucks, no doubt about it, but it's not necessarily the horrible automatic end of life as you know it, it's just one of the cards that you're dealt in this life, and you get through it one way or another. And yes, if there's any way that anything that I might have to say or think or feel or do can be taken as holding hand for anyone that has heard the words "you have cancer" then that's what I need to do. I'm not trying to be magnanimous, or trying to be the good girl yet again in my life, I'm just trying to stay real and figure out if I have something to contribute, and that's not so easy to know.