Waiting...

Living with cancer involves all kinds of waiting!! It truly boggles the mind when you stop to think about it! There is the waiting for appointments to be scheduled, then the waiting for the appointment day and the time in the many "waiting rooms". If the appointment was a scan or other test there is the long waiting for the results.

It is safe to say that over the last 5 years I have pretty well always been waiting for some event to take place in terms of various appointments, scans, procedures, results, or whatever. You have to learn to become a "patient waiter" if you are going to live with cancer.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to a friend that I was waiting for some test results. She empathized with me and offered that "waiting is sometimes the hardest part". I had to agree. Sometimes waiting is very difficult. Like a couple of years ago when I had to wait months to have a procedure done to remove a small tumour from my liver. Every week of waiting was another week of the tumour growing. It is hard to be a "patient waiter" when you have a cancer tumour growing in you!

Another kind of waiting is the waiting to get test results. I handle this much better. I figure that the scan is done and I can't do anything about it. It is nice to enjoy a few days of "unknowing" before bad news is confirmed!

So here I am waiting for an appointment with the Cancer Agency. It helps me to know that while I am waiting there is a team of top oncologists and technicians reviewing my very extensive file and designing a treatment plan that will help me along this stage of my journey. Soon enough the waiting will be over and I'll be taking on some combination of radiation, surgery, and chemo. For now waiting is OK!

Waiting in Hope! Rob

"I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes." Steven Wright