Hi Sheri

thank you so much for replying and yikes you had BCCs as well. Little worriers aren't they?

I got lucky again, all clear, another hurdle jumped. 

This is prety much the only group I look at - it sounds as if the other Facebook group might be at times a little draining for you at times? 

I know that my 'Dr Google' habit is worse when I am anxious, so I am trying to distract myself around scan time and come on here which is pretty wholesome instead. 

Hope you continue to enjoy better health. 

Susannah

Hi Susannah,

I get an error message when I try to respond to your feed below.  Just wondering how your last scan went and how you are feeling.

xo Sheri

HI Sheri

I had error messages for quite a few weeks when I tried twice to reply to you, but not now luckily!

January scan went well, another hurdle jumped! Thyroid scan showed no cancer yesterday so that is great too.

Onto April for the next quarterly scan to check no recurrance of the anal cancer. That will be one year since treatment, and I saw the first 2 years are where any recurrance usually happens, so I am hopefuly that I am half way to 'safety'!

Feeling so much more confident - I spent last year pretty scared as it felt so real that this could go either way - in part due to mis diagnosis, so my confidence in the medical team was low, until I got a second medical team to belt and braces double check things. 

So now I feel confident in the new medical team and also lucky and glad to so far be showing clear on all scans. The new medical team is doing MRIs every 3 months, whereas the other one did not, which worried me, I prefer to have all checks done!

How are you?

Susannah

That's wonderful, Susannah!  I'm due for a CT scan, but delaying it until the end of the month. They slow down with the scans after 3 years and just scan once a year, which makes me a bit anxious.  My sister was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  She lives a little over 3 hours away.  Although she had several long relationships during her lifetime, she never married so I'm staying with her for a while.  She has been really sick for the past year and a half and her doctor kept treating her for IBS.  She even went to the ER twice, but it was during the height of COVID so they pretty much pooh poohed it away after letting her sit in the waiting room for 12 hours.  Ovarian cancer is a lengthy treatment and it isn't staged until surgery, which is done after 2-3 months of chemo.  

I'm feeling ok, thank you.  I always have bum pain and the chemo pushed me into severe osteoporosis.  My bones scream at me a lot.  But I feel very blessed that the treatment worked thus far.  I no longer have a fear of it returning in my bum, but the fear of metastasis sits on my shoulder and I stay close to my bathroom.  I doubt that that fear will ever go completely away. 

I'm so glad that you found a good care team.  It's so important. 

Wishing you continued good results,

Sheri

oh Sheri that sucks. I am so sorry to hear about your sister's misfortune.

I learnt to be really proactive - after a 3 year mis diagnosis - but it is a tough lesson to learn - that we have to advocate for uoirselves and sometimes politely step out of the noem, which is to trust and believe fully the doctor. I'm a big fan of second opinions these days.

Lovely you can be with her. 

What can you do to reduce anxiety of it returning? Stats wise you are in a great place, my reading here in the UK is that outside of the initial 2 year window post treatment it is very rare to return. The 'danger zone'' is the first 2 years from my reading and the graphs the onclogist showed me - abot a 20% recurrance. 

I (oddly for me) did hypotherapy for the fear - it worked - perhaps you might try somethiing like that to reduce your fear?

Take care

Susannah

Thank you, Susannah.  I'll research hypnotherapy in my area.  It's worth a try.

xo Sheri