I naively thought that once my husband got the “all clear” from his oncologist that we would be wiping our hands clean of the whole ugly mess. Silly girl. No, now I believe that cancer just might be sleeping in our guest room. Don’t get me wrong, the door is firmly closed and we tiptoe past there lest we waken the sleeping giant.
But really, when your husband is on an every three month scan schedule, it’s really hard to escape the stupid creature. His scan is tomorrow and we have been anticipating it for a while now. He has some worrisome symptoms that may or may not be suggestive of cancer’s return, aging, hypochrondria, something else or nothing entirely. It’s all part of that whole Aftershocks thing that I have written about.
Every now and then, I catch a glimpse of a shadow coming down the hall and if I turn fast enough and cast my “mad mommy eye” towards it, it retreats like the petulant boogeyman that it is. And just like defending against the figment of a child’s nightmare, I have to search under the bed, leave a small nightlight on and hope that what I fear most is simply not true.
But we are at the mercy of a machine that will read the tea leaves of our collective fate and on the schedule of the messenger who will deliver the news. In the meantime, I will hope that the tears stay behind my eyes and that the next week goes quickly so that we can exhale and do whatever comes next.