SpencerWon

It is a strange experience as cancer withdraws from Spencer’s day to day life with agonizing slowness. It is such a contrast to how it came into our lives literally overnight. The past two or three weeks, I keep getting these odd micro-anxiety moments. “What have I forgotten?” my brain asks me. “I have forgotten to take Spencer to the oncologist! We haven’t been since December!” But I haven’t forgotten. It’s just cancer slowly leaving the upstage position our lives. December marked one year off-treatment and now he only needs to see the oncologist every two months.

The visits are usually uneventful. This visit was a quick blood test and exam. No worries. Blood counts fine and I have the paperwork to prove it. The machine counts are normal; I cried the first time that happened in March 2008. They will have a human verify and scan for abnormal cells. For now, people are better at blood analysis than machines.

In November, Spencer was sick and had double the normal white count. It almost seemed as if the clinic staff wanted us to panic at the number, but it was what we expected for a sick kid. Since Spencer’s diagnosis, I simply don’t seem to have panic in me. Fear, anxiety, sadness, anger. These I have had, but moments where I might have panicked just become planning and contingency exercises.

So, cancer is no longer center stage, but it continues to be a character. It makes an appearance in a scene every once in a while. Sometimes, I feel like it’s just waiting for a chance to be upstage center again. For now I am just learning to live with cancer leaving, but never gone.