Another Day, Another Scan

My baby sister had a pet scan yesterday.  She will not get her results for 6 days, 14 hours and 3.5 minutes (assuming the doctor is on time...ok so let's make it a clean 6 days and 15 hours).  Even when I am not with her, I can feel her anxiety coursing through her veins, I can feel her taking long slow breaths when her heart begins to speed up in panicked anxiety, or maybe that is me.  

We talk about being cancer free as being a closed book and it is. There is no chemo and there is no radiation, there are no feeding tubes and no daily shots to the stomach, yet you do not simply close the door and walk away. 

I look back at my blog and see big gaps in my story. I have written about many of my sisters milestones and yet when I reached my own, I was unable to find the words. I thought for weeks, about what to say and then, as it began to feel like old news, I simply let it pass.  I tried to wrap my head around what I was feeling.  I tried to capture a pretty feeling of elation but to be honest, it is a slightly hollow elation and it is nearly impossible to fully describe the joy without the shroud of mistrust and fear showing through. 

Still I am forever grateful for my experience, it has made me embrace life more fully. It has made me cherish the mundane moments, (not laundry...I will never look back on time spent doing laundry with a smile). 

Today, I hold tight to the silly conversations with Bean that we have in the car as we run boring errands, I turn my back on cleaning and choose instead to curl up with a book in the summer breeze.

Summer is my Super Bowl and I am soaking it in minute by minute.  Still, as we await the results of my sisters scan with my next scan approaching in the coming weeks, it is hard to remain very zen like. I look at every new bruise as an indicator that the cancer is back, I am suspicious of feeling tired, even when I know I am tired because I stayed up a few extra hours to barrel through a few more episodes of 'Orange is the New Black'. 

My days are both ordinary and so very extraordinary in many  ways and not so very different from anyone else.  I simply have an extra narrator nestled deep within my soul whispering 'what if' as I mix a margarita and pad gently into the sun soaked backyard, armed with water balloons, a giggling little girl and her dog.