Thursday 7th May

I saw the oncologist today and was pronounced fit and healthy. He said that everything is looking good and progressing normally. When I told him that I still get tired, he grinned (wryly, I think, but I’m not sure that it the best adverb to use here) and told me to give myself time.

For someone in whom patience is not a natural virtue, this is always a bit of a challenge. This is, also, one of the biggest things this cancer thing has taught me.

Time does so many things. It changes some things and takes away others. It also brings others closer.

Today I had to,finally, drink the preparation solution for the colonoscopy tomorrow. Yuck! If I can stomach that, I reckon I can deal with quite a lot 🙂

Sarah asked me again today what the scopes are all about. I think she just wanted to make sure that there was no ‘cancer connection’. I told her that they are merely routine, but that the reason for going for my check up was undoubtedly prompted, in some part, by the whole experience of cancer and the need to know that everything is on track.

Tonight, that feeling was reinforced. There is no doubt that another lesson the cancer thing has taught me is that early detection is paramount and is really the only way to effect a complete cure of anything, really. I still have absolutely no sense of there being anything vaguely wrong with my digestive system (besides having a generally sensitive constitution), but I do know that doing what should be done routinely just to keep an eye (so to speak) on what is going on, is essential.

I am as sure as one can be that I will go through this whole procedure to be told that everything is fine and dandy. Yay. I sincerely hope I am right.

If not, though, then I will be immensely glad to have had the check done so that whatever else may need to be done can be begun.

I don’t do doctors easily, but, when there are things we don’t know and can’t see easily, then there is absolutely no doubt that the best thing is to follow the doctors’ advice – and to make use of tests and procedures that can give that  little bit more information just to help the experts know how to advise you further.

So, I won’t readily take a painkiller for a headache, but I will, willingly, have the scopes to understand better what is going on inside me.

I don’t want to be prodded and probed, again. It just feels like too many doctors and too many hospitals in the last number of months. As it’s all for the best for me, though, tomorrow bright and early, I will be on my way to Sandton.

After having drunk litres more of the horrible preparation fluid.

Yay 🙁