May we find health, healing and hope in the new year
By John Bach
As we approach Julie’s final chemo treatment, we’re learning the meaning of a brand new word — “scanxiety.”
If all goes as expected, Julie’s last chemotherapy will take place on January 7, 2022. This is a date we’ve looked forward to ever since we learned she would have to undergo chemical infusions.
Part of me can’t believe we’ve already reached the end of this phase of her treatment. But then I think back over all the trips to the Barrett Cancer Center in the second half of 2021. I think back to July 29, the day she had her port surgically implanted. And Aug. 6, when her nurse hung the first Chemo bag.
Less than a week after the final drop of chemo enters her bloodstream, doctors will conduct a series of fresh scans to determine the status of Julie’s cancer and the game plan for obliterating whatever may be left of it. Surgery and radiation are most likely, but the extent of each will depend on what’s found. Julie’s doctor examines her weekly, and for the last several weeks, she has been unable to feel the tumor in her breast.
While that seems extremely positive, the idea of taking a close-up look at what’s happening physiologically scares the hell out of us. During her last visit, Julie told Dr. Elyse Lower she was feeling anxious about the chemo phase ending, and that’s when the doc explained that feeling is so common among patients that the medical world created the term “scanxiety.”
For what it’s worth, I think the mashup works just swell as a noun, but I’m not sure it holds up as an adjective. “I’m feeling scanxious.” I think not.
But you get the idea. For the last five months, we’ve been head down plowing our way through this phase. As I texted a friend: “Sadly, chemo has become the known — almost comfortable.” To which he astutely replied: “The enemy we know is almost always preferable over the enemy that we don’t.”
So, as we prepare to leave the “comforts” of the chemo suite for other floors of the cancer center in 2022, may we find good news. May we find light at the end of what has been a long, dark tunnel. May we find health, healing and hope in the new year.
