Unsettled

I intended to write up an interesting article I came across. Y’all know how much I love science and delving into the details of new melanoma research. But as I sat down to type it, I started writing something entirely different.

A few more people I know have been diagnosed (or rediagnosed) with some form of cancer in the past few months. It’s unsettling, particularly in one case where the woman had seven years where she was cancer-free, only to have it return. I’m not going to lie. Those situations make me sad and nervous for her as well as sad and nervous for me. It sounds selfishly weird but hearing someone else’s cancer return reminds me in a visceral way that no matter what, I will never quite be out of the shadow of that fear of my melanoma returning.

And it’s a hard thing to grapple with sometimes. Most of the time, I’m relentlessly optimistic in thinking it’s gone, completely gone, from my body. But the past month has been really stressful for me, so I was incredibly alarmed to see pink spots appear on my skin. While it might have been psoriasis popping up in a totally new location, knowing that my system had been pretty stressed made me look a lot closer at those spots of skin. I had my every-six-months follow up with my dermatologist last week (that was actually delayed because my former boss scheduled a meeting with me that overlapped with my appointment and my dumb ass rescheduled the appointment – and it turned out to be the meeting that I “got let go”). I was far more subdued in the exam room than I usually am but fortunately, I had an outcome that was “see you in six months”. I should be delighted by that, right? But oddly, I’m not.

In a way, not having the safety blanket of getting the one or two weird things on my skin more closely looked at makes me nervous, not reassured. And that’s kinda f’ed up because I really don’t want more biopsy scars. Heck, I’ve got one on my leg that looks like someone put out a cigar on my skin that I’m really not happy with. So I’m not one of those masochistic people who likes scarifying myself. It’s an odd feeling that I’m not happy I have no further battle scars.

Weird. I’ve been pretty introspective lately trying to figure out what I’m actually feeling and why. I’m not sure if it’s some form of survivor’s guilt because I’m hearing about people who are dealing with cancer (again) and yet I got the all clear for the next six months. I’m not sure if it’s just my normal pessimism reasserting itself. I’m not sure if it’s that fear, a fear that lurks in my hidden parts of my mind most of the time, has come out to play.