Test me, cancer doctors! (But only if the results are good, yeah?)

All aboard the post-cancer check-up rollercoaster.

Birmingham Museum Trust for Unsplash

An audio version of this article (narrated by me) is available here:

Soon, I’ll be having my 12-month post-cancer checks: a CT scan, an ultrasound, and a smorgasbord of blood tests. I’m considered high-risk for recurrence, so, for now, I have checks every three months. In another year, that will drop to testing every six months. (I also have to have colonoscopies at random intervals.) When I get the five-year all-clear – I was going to say ‘if’, but no one wants to be pals with Negative Nancy – my ‘risk profile’ becomes the same as anyone else’s. I’ll be no more likely to get cancer than you or any random mucker on the street. How magic is that? How amazing are bodies? It’s almost enough to make me religious. (Almost).

Doctors don’t know why I got colon cancer. It’s not hereditary and I have no genetic quirks. I’ve never had any bowel issues – my body went full-bore CANCER without so much as a bout of gluten intolerance to test the waters. I find that scary because, short of trying to be as healthy as possible while still living a nice life, there’s nothing I can do or change to ward it off. It also means that I really appreciate the regular testing because obviously whenever I get the tiniest cramp, I’m immediately like, “YEP, THE CANCER’S BACK. THIS IS IT. WHO WANTS ALL OF MY STUFF? Oh, wait. I just stood up funny. AS YOU WERE.”

The trouble with constant testing, though, is that it emphasises the strange limbo of the aftermath. ‘Normal life’ has started again – which is bizarre enough after a year spent contemplating a slow, painful slide off the planet – but then every three months, normality stutters like a record scratch and you’re yanked back into The Terror. The strangest time of my life was sitting with my partner and our baby in a magnolia-painted hospital room that stank of disinfectant, being told I had Stage 3 colon cancer. It was a proper ‘before and after’ moment. We both knew life would never be the same. Imagining that same conversation happening again, knowing exactly what it means in terms of treatment and ‘what ifs’, sometimes feels overwhelming. When I let it. When I let the fear inch up my throat. I have to keep consciously swallowing it down.

So, I want all of the testing… and I don’t. Life starts again… and it doesn’t. Cancer is over… and it’s not. It’s all a memory… and it’s smack-bang in the present. You want to plan for the future… but also just live for today because ‘what if…?’

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I read an interview with Sam Taylor-Johnson while I was in treatment and discovered that she had also had colon cancer – and then breast cancer. It’s an extraordinary tale. She says she finds attending her check-ups so horrendous that she once tried to throw herself out of a moving car en route to the hospital. I get that. It makes total sense to me. You want to know and you don’t.

A friend of mine recently passed his five-year cancer all-clear. He marked it by having a good cry somewhere scenic. Now, that is a moment. I am so proud and so happy for him. I can’t imagine what that will feel like, but I’m excited to get there. For now, I have to focus on navigating these tests – and getting good results, obvs – so I can celebrate my one-year mark. And by ‘focus’ I mean swallowing the fear and distracting myself relentlessly. Wish me luck.

Just One More Thing

I don’t google cancer facts or stats. I never have. That’s perhaps surprising for a journalist – someone whose job revolves around research. However, I know through my mental health work that my brain will only try to prove my biggest fears, zeroing in on the worst possible outcomes in its twisty way of trying to make me feel ‘safe’. It fascinates me how some people find comfort in knowing everything, while others (hi!) stay sane by knowing absolutely sod all and letting the cards fall where they may.

This once bit me in the arse (kind of literally – there must be a colon cancer joke in there somewhere?), when I turned up for an MRI scan thinking it was a quick x-ray. Instead, I was hooked up to two IVs and shoved into a full-body tube for 40 minutes with deafening CLUNKETYCLUNKCLUNKCLUNK noises shaking my bones. Honestly, though, I’m still glad I hadn’t looked it up because I would have had nervous poos for days beforehand – and that’s not ideal when you have a stoma (as I did then).

There’s probably a whole article in this – how people handle scary things differently – and I might research that. My tests, though? Nope. I still have no clue what’s happening or why and I’m okay with that. I trust the docs and the universe to get on with it. Just let me know when you know, yeah?

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*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.