Stable…

…mentally?

“Mild decrease in size of lymphadenopathy.”

“Majority of pulmonary nodules are stable in size. One micronodule in the right lung is mildly more prominent than seen previously.”

Yay?

Ask any cancer patient how they would take that news. Your answers will probably overwhelmingly fall between “I don’t believe it” to “I don’t trust it” to “I still have cancer- I will always have cancer.”

Most outsiders will respond with sadness, silence or some type of “look on the brightside” response. None of them are really wrong- just as you might not know what to say or do neither do we most of the time. We’re playing this game where we don’t know what’s going on, what the next move is, what the rules or outcome is and it’s all a mystery to us too.

But if you go through scans for years you try to numb it out.

“Good news” means nothing. Even if you’re NED (no evidence of disease) you don’t really get excited at all. Maybe you have a dinner or drink to celebrate but in the back of your mind you wonder when the floor gives out again. That back of your mind- that also slowly overtakes most of it.

Throw in incurable cancer and you really will never trust any good news again as NED just means your cancer is really good at hiding right now- but never gone.

“Bad news*” may take you a bit lower but slight growth does not mean much especially if you’ve heard it before. Again you are numb to a lot of it.**

*This does not include terrible news. That is a whole other level of bad that does not fall under bad.

**Numb is what you feel but really you’re taking the weight of the news and throwing it in your proverbial backpack. Trying to ignore it while it still weighs you down.

So what now? Well same old same old.

Nothing changes. Daily pill, infusion every other week and scans every three months. Rinse and repeat.

So to round this all out, how do I feel about these results? Meh.

-Joe