Three years of scans every three months means finding a way to grow and change that's not limited or defined by cancer
PUBLISHED February 16, 2018
Martha lives in Illinois and was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in January 2015. She has a husband and three children, ranging in age from 12 to 18, a dog and a lizard.
I've lived three years now with CT scans every three months. I'm like a forest, living each season while planning for the next. The timing of my scans actually roughly corresponds to the seasons of Illinois. In late January, I had the first for 2018 at the very depths of winter (just a week later the largest snowstorm of the season dumped more than a foot of snow on my house). My next is already written on my calendar for mid-April when the peonies will be in bloom along my driveway, and if everything remains the same I'll have another one just as a new school years gets underway in mid-August. Living in three-month increments is what I do. But how much can a person accomplish in three months, especially if the last weeks within those three months is sometimes overshadowed by the dread of the upcoming tests Let's just call it a solid two-month stretch four times a year during which I could live in optimistic denial about cancer. Except when I have a new twinge somewhere in my body or when I learn that a friend similarly diagnosed has had progression of cancer or when someone I know has died from this disease.
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