You’d think getting rid of cancer would be the end of it. You fought the toughest battle of your life and won. You’re the survivor. You have seen the darkest imaginable times and somehow found the light. But then just when you think you’re safe, and the doctors tell you you’re in “Remission”, you realize that yes, the war has been won, but there is always a possibility of having to return to the battlefield and reclaim your glory.

The word remission is weird. Even the dictionary definition implies that somehow my cancer was a punishment issued to me.

Remission – noun: remission
1.) the cancellation of a debt, charge, or penalty.
2.) a diminution of the seriousness or intensity of disease or pain; a temporary recovery.
3.) forgiveness of sins.

Oxford English Dictionary

CT scans are designed to detect any sort of inflammation or problem within the body, and highlight it so that the trained professionals reading the scan can analyze what’s going on. They aren’t designed specifically for cancer detection, but they are the first step. Usually a CT scan leads to a PET scan, which is a scan that’s geared more specifically toward detecting specific types of cancer. The yearly scans to confirm remission are just CT scans, which are much easier to perform, and obtain approval for. Now here’s the fun part, if you have anything else going on in your body at the time of the scan, say for example, early appendicitis, it would present itself in the CT scan.

So there I was, a few days before my first yearly CT scan to determine if my cancer was kept at bay, or if I’d have to suit up again. My stomach started aching, but that was to be expected, right? I have an anxiety riddled appointment coming up and based on my previous experiences of my scheduled oncologist visits, having a bit of stomach related cramps usually comes hand in hand with that. The appointment was scheduled for July 5th, and we were also scheduled to leave early the next morning to go to New York to visit some friends. For as much anxiety as I had about the appointment, it didn’t keep us from booking a trip in which we left the morning after my scan. The underlying assumption that I was still cancer-free was fully present and we weren’t led to believe anything else would come of it.

The day was long. One full of appointments, labs, a scan, and one final oncologist appointment to let me know all of the results. Test results are pretty immediate these days and I usually have access to them through an online portal, prior to my appointment. Everything came back normal, all the labs were in the green range, the scan showed no evidence of cancer. But it did show a periappendiceal inflammation, which is medical code for a slight case of appendicitis. So imagine, if you can, my oncologist walks into my room, and after a nearly 9 hour day full of appointments, I just want to get the good news and go home. He sits down and says, “Congratulations, you’re still cancer-free!! But I think you may have a bit of appendicitis.” Seriously? I need my appendix removed? Thinking about how we’re supposed to be getting on a plane in roughly 12 hours, my next question was immediately presented to him and his response was, “Oh no, I wouldn’t travel right now at all.” So once again, here I am, cancelling a trip, scheduling a surgery, and yet again, having to submit to a stronger foe.

The good news is that the surgery went fine. I’ve had biopsies that were worse than the appendix removal. I think that’s part of the issue too. Cancer, as I’ve recently found out, puts things in perspective, even after it’s long gone. Things don’t hurt as bad as they used to or might to others, and your body presents illnesses in different ways. Even the woman drawing my blood was apologizing for ripping some hair out and while I could feel it, and knew it should have been painful, I could tolerate it. The problem with that, of course, is that you have to be aware of things that may be out of the ordinary. You can’t just assume that some stomach pain is caused by the anxiety of a yearly cancer check, because you never know, it could be appendicitis.