When you are diagnosed with cancer, you have many hurdles to jump.  First the biopsies.  Then the surgery.  Then the chemo.  Then the baldness, the nausea, the joint pain, the muscle aches, the mouth sores and the fatigue.  Then comes radiation and more fatigue.  Then comes the moment when you’ve finished your last treatment, and you breathe a sigh of relief. 

And then comes the fear.

What if I’m never the same?  What if I can’t live with these scars?  What if they didn’t get it all?  What if it comes back?  What if it’s not so treatable next time?  What if I’m dying and I just don’t know it yet?

I imagine it’s similar to the way soldiers feel when they win a skirmish with the enemy they can see, but know they could still get taken out by the sniper they can’t see.  It’s a feeling of vulnerability.  Defenselessness.  And, if you think about it too long, debilitating fear.

For most cancer patients, this takes the form of a heightened awareness of every physical sensation.  I have a headache.  It must be a brain tumor.  My back hurts.  I must have spinal mets.  I forgot where I put my keys.  The brain tumor must be worse than I thought. 

The other day I was driving and I got a sudden twinge in my knee and I instinctively thought, I must have cancer in my knee.  And then I had to remind myself that you can’t get cancer in your kneecap.  

I started doing research on the Internet in an attempt to get a handle on this fear.  I wanted to find out how other cancer survivors have been able to move on with their lives, what has helped other women get over the fear of the unknown future.

On Breastcancer.org I found an article that listed ten steps you can take to minimize the fear of a recurrence.  It listed suggestions like, Be an active part of your treatment team.  Reach out to people around you for support and reassurance.  Ask  your oncologist for medicine to help you with your anxiety. And, Even women with very advanced cancer live longer than expected due to advances in cancer therapy.

Instead of assuaging my fear, the article greatly increased my apprehension.  Really?  Seriously?  That’s all you’ve got? I wondered. Am I really supposed to be less afraid because if I get metastatic cancer, a new chemo drug that might make me really sick could possibly add a few weeks or months to my tortured life?  That’s what’s supposed to make me feel better? 

If I wake up in the middle of the night with a panic attack, I’m really supposed to soothe myself with the thought,  Don’t worry, if you get metastatic cancer you won’t die in six months; you’ll die in nine, and then fall back into a blissful sleep. 

I don’t know who wrote that article, but if you’re reading this, THAT DOESN’T HELP AT ALL.

So what does help?  Not much, actually.  Unless your mind allows you to live in denial (mine, unfortunately, does not), the reality is that in some cases, cancer does come back and it’s not treatable, and in spite of the best treatment, people die.  So there you go.

The only reassurance I’ve been able to find in all of this is in Psalm 139 that says, “All of my days were written in Your book before one of them came to be…I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The only meaningful answer I’ve been able to find for the lingering questions of an unknown future is that I have been made by a Creator who knows me and loves me and has carefully planned the day I was born and the day I will die. 

Any other hope seems at best trite, and at worst, a lie.

Anxiety medicines are temporary.  Even the best-intentioned family and friends are human and will let you down sometimes.  And while cancer advances are encouraging, and, let’s face it, the reason I’m alive to write this, they fail, too. 

But our Creator?  He never fails.  He is never late.  He is never wrong.  He knit my being together in infinitely careful detail, and He is the sovereign master of every part of me. 

I surrendered my life to Him long before this cancer came along.   And no matter what happens, He is, as He has always been, Lord of my life, my death, my career, my finances, my health – and yes, even my kneecaps.