Mixed feelings

It's a funny day today. This time two years ago, I was just waking up, sore and groggy, but hopefully cancer free. I'd been through all the terrors and all the pain, and it seemed that there was light at the end of the tunnel. More treatment to do - radiotherapy and drugs for a few years - but the bad stuff had all been cut out, and was on its way to be sliced and diced and analysed. A couple of days and the results came in, the surgeon came to my bedside to tell me that they got it all. That was pretty special, I can tell you!
So this is my second anniversary. I feel that I should be running and jumping, and full of joy - so why am I not?

Granted, it's all been a bit weird the last month or so. I have had a couple of major wobbles in the last month... the sort of wobbles where I sit staring into space for hours at a time, fretting about stuff. I've had a pain in my leg - my thigh, a big bone - and it didn't go away. This is a worry, it's one of the things they tell you to report if it doesn't go away after a couple of weeks. It didn't. So eventually I took two practical steps. first; I rang the Breast Care Nurses - they were great, listened, understood, and made an appointment for me to see the Great Man as soon as possible. Then I rang the Breast Cancer Care helpline, and whibbled about my wobble for half an hour. It's such a vital thing, to have someone to squawk to when it gets scary. The bloody cancer fairy sits in the corner of the room all the time, mostly she stays behind the curtain but when she creeps out into full view it's a great help to have someone to talk to who knows. The trouble with that particular fairy is that only I can see her... she dances around waving her wand and nobody else has any idea of the damage she's doing. Anyway, after half an hour of dumping my terror on a nice lady on the phone, I felt a bit better.

So yesterday was my appointment with the Great Man. I haven't seen him for ages - there's a point where you don't see the consultant any more, you see one of the other surgeons, which initially is a worry but really it means that you're not on the "watch like a hawk" list any more - which is a Good Thing. It's nice to see him, though - he's tall, gorgeous, has an outrageously sexy accent and is absolutely embarrassed about the fact that all his patients are in love with him!
He was really reassuring... not the "pat-on-the-hand tilty-head" reassurance which is not reassurance at all, but the sensible, calm reassurance borne of an understanding of the facts and years of experience of dealing with this stuff every day. There's nothing nasty going on in my breasts or any of my small remaining collection of lymph nodes. If there was something nasty growing on my left femur (which, of course is my biggest fear) then it would be causing more pain than it has been, which would never go away. The locations that I pointed at, and the pattern of when the pain comes and goes, supports the sensible thought that it's muscular. However, to a) be on the safe side and b) provide (hopefully) real reassurance, he's booking a bone scan, which will reveal anything horrid lurking, or, we trust, prove that there's nowt nasty in there. He's also writing to my GP to suggest he books a bone density scan and I've had blood taken so that various other things can be checked and excluded. If everything comes back clear, then it's just either old age or the perennial problem of being a bit unfit and a bit overweight with poor posture.

 Then it got weird- he looked me up and down with the frank, openly appraising expression that only a Breast Surgeon can pull off without being creepy or getting slapped.... and said "Hmmm... how do you feel about the cosmetic results? We did take rather a lot out of there... Shall we do something about it?"
I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. On the one hand, it's reassuring, if he didn't think all was fine he wouldn't be offering to rebuild the remains of my battered boob. On the other, it's a bit strange to have someone tell you in no uncertain terms that your boobs are wonky! I guess he's just a perfectionist...

So, for now, I am back in the waiting room... all the reassuring noises are great, but now I will be walking on knives until I get the scan results. Logic tells me that it is all fine, and in four weeks from now I will be jumping up and down.

But today I am not, and it's really strange.