There is No Road Map

When you are dealing with a serious illness such as cancer, you have to become comfortable with uncertainty.  If you are person who can go with the flow all the time, you will be much saner than me.  I don't like uncertainty.  I plan.  I like my calendar.  I fill in boxes with activities, to do items, appointments, etc. Knowing what comes next is comforting. It helps me sleep at night knowing what the next day or the next week brings. 

With cancer treatment there is no firm plan.  I started at Point A (stage IV cancer), and I'm hopefully headed toward Point B (cancer in remission).  In my mind, there should be a road map - follow this path, stop at these milestones, take these exits, and you will find yourself at Point B in a certain amount of time.  This is a plan I can put down on my calendar and mark off days to reach Point B. Only it does not work like that dealing with the unpredictability of cancer, pharmacology, and the human body. There is not a road map at all.  It's more of a general direction that can be reached in a variety of ways.  Point B is over yonder. Head that way and see what happens.  Different than the precision of a road map, it is more like making your way across a stream by stepping on rocks.  You don't know if you will be able to make it across on the path you can see from the stream bank. You have to get in the stream and start taking steps to see where the next step will be.  You have to have faith that the path you are on will lead you to where you want to be.  You have to listen to the guide who has seen many people across the stream before. You have to be willing to stop and look around a bit for the next step.  You might need to backtrack and start across a different way. You may make a misstep and land on your ass in the water.  Or worse - get washed down stream. 

I'm somewhere in the middle of the stream now with six chemo treatments behind me. My oncologist and I are stopping soon to reconnoiter and survey the path ahead. I have a CT scan coming up and then we'll talk about which step to take next. I am hoping for a break after chemo #7 so that I can get healthy for surgery. I will sit on my rock in the middle of a swirling stream acting like life is normal for a while. I'm looking forward to that.  I am ready to write in some normal time on my calendar.