I’m not brave

I’m not brave.

My sister asked me to give a speech for Relay for Life.  Just a 5 minute speech on how it was to have breast cancer.

I turned her down.  

I’m not much for public speaking.  I get tongue tied and nervous.  It’s just not my thing.  When I told her those things, she said, “but you were so brave going through cancer.”

No, no I wasn’t.

As a matter of fact, I was a big baby.  I cried a lot. I felt sorry for myself.  I had panic attacks.  I curled up in a ball and prayed.  I retreated into my shell and didn’t even want to leave the house.

Of course, I didn’t show this side of me to the public.  

See the thing is, when you are diagnosed with something, you do what you have to do.  The doctors tell you what the treatment is, you research it, you listen to what they have to say and then once you decide what you are going to do, you do it.

There is nothing brave about it. Nothing at all.  You just do what you have to do.  You move through it.  You deal with it any way you can.  You cry, you curl up in a ball, you smile, you pretend everything is fine.  You just do.

It’s been 9 years exactly since my diagnosis.  Jan 15, 2010.

Since that day, I’ve gone to the dr every 6 months to check my blood and make sure everything is good.  November, I went to the routine exam and was told my blood test came back a little high in alkaline.  It’s called the ALP.  Mine was slightly elevated.  I mean, 3 points off.  Not really that big of a deal, but still something to look at.  The doc says, it’s caused from either your liver or bones.  So, we wait 6 weeks and retake the test.  Which meant I went through the holidays with this in the back of my mind.  I retook the test, along with a different test in the beginning of January.  Test shows it’s not coming from my liver.  Liver is fine, but the cancer marker is slightly elevated for bones.  Again, slightly.

So now he recommends a ct scan and a bone scan.  I got the ct scan done and my insurance is taking forever to approve the bone scan but that is next.

I go back on Monday to find out the results.

Monday.

Like I said, I’m not brave.  I cried at the ct scan.  I’ll probably cry at the bone scan.  Neither of these are painful, you just lay there, but still.  I’ll cry.  

Inside I’m panicking. I’m scared.  I’m trying not to imagine my family without me. 

It’s probably nothing. I’m sure it’s fine.

Seriously...I’m not brave. Not even a tiny bit.