Cancer Time Bomb

My mind feels broken

In this post I write about the fear, anxiety and realities of living with Stage 4 cancer. It is a raw update so be warned! I always give you the truth!

I have a CT scan on Friday that will determine the next 6 months of my life. I can't explain the depth of agony that is living life from scan to scan causes, the odds being less in my favour every time.

Yesterday I had a panic attack. It's started this time before I've even had the scan, last time it was the morning of the results.

The night before this recent panic attack I fell out with Grace at bedtime, and suddenly everything spilled over. The scan. The waiting. The numbers I wish I didn’t know but do. I am now over the three years “expected” survival time, a 12% chance of seeing December 2026. Percentages that sit in my head like an unwanted countdown, one I keep saying is irrelevant and that I don't believe in, but they still sit so heavy.

If the scan is okay, I can take a break from chemo, everything changes. If it isn’t okay, everything changes.

If it is okay… am I even doing the right thing by stopping chemo? The oncologists say yes.. my gut says yes, my brain says but what if… And that’s the thing about living with cancer. It turns your mind into a worst case scenario frenzy - hence the panic attack.

There is no neutral ground. Every possibility branches into ten more, and all of them feel urgent, catastrophic, and exhausting.

Sometimes I think wouldn’t it be easier if the cancer just took over? If it all just… ended?

I hate admitting that. Because of course I don’t want that, and then I beat myself up for thinking it, like I am inviting the cancer in.

I want to stay stable. I want more time. I want to live. But the constant fear, the waiting for the cancer time bomb to go off again, does things to my mind. It’s not a wish to die, it’s a wish to stop worrying about when everything might fall apart and panicking every day that I am running out of time to do the things I want to do before I die.

I’m acutely aware of how hard this is for those around me, and I feel the quiet guilt of not always being able to protect them from my fear. It’s what happens when the fear peaks and emotions overflow faster than I can manage them.

One of my deepest fears is that Grace will carry memories of an angry, snappy mummy, when the truth is that I’m just trying to survive moments when everything inside me is at breaking point, and at that breaking point it takes only one more tiny thing to tip me over the edge.

I talk to her, I explain in the best way I can without scaring her and she has been so good. I can't help but worry about what it is doing to her too though. But I can't hide it all the time, it's too much to bear.

There’s also the work of letting go. Most of the time, day to day, I manage this. I find ways to live in the present, to deal with what is actually in front of me rather than what might be coming. But as scans and results loom, that grip loosens. It becomes harder to sit back and allow things to unfold, even though I know I have to. I can’t fight this process. I can’t out think it or control it. And yet I still try, as if the worrying itself is a kind of defence. What am I even fighting? Just myself. The worry changes nothing, I know that, and still it’s there. I can’t seem to let the unknown just be unknown, even when I know that’s the only option I actually have.

This week I have two things to manage. The first is to be ready for the scan itself, for the inevitable anxiety, the spiralling thoughts, the possibility of another panic attack.

The second is to be ready for bad news. To not hang everything on clear scans, just in case it isn’t there this time - I sometimes feel it's better to expect the worse then it can only be that or better.

That balancing act feels cruel. How do you hope without clinging? How do you prepare without giving up? And then there’s the other side, always assumed to be easier. .... if the news is good.... of course that is the outcome I so desperately want, if it wasn't I wouldn't be worrying. But herein lies the irony, good news means other worries, because if it isn't this scan, one day the time bomb will go off eventually - that's stage 4 cancer.

If it's good news I need to try not to go into a frenzy of wanting to do everything now, driven by the terror that this might be my last window of feeling okay. Because even if I stop chemo, there are no guarantees. I don't know how long I will manage without it and I might not tolerate it as well next time. This “good” moment still comes with an expiry date I can’t see and anxiety.

I then have to plan and try my hardest to live a life that is realistic and joyful within that. Bestival is already booked—Grace and I loved it so much last year. That feels right. That feels possible. My parents have organised for us all to see my brother in Spain over Easter too and I cannot wait.

But then my brain jumps ahead - what about Canada and Finland/Norway? Is that wildly unrealistic? Or is it exactly the kind of dreaming I need to let myself do? If it's a dream I can't ever make happen what's the point? If it's a dream I can make happen but only once I'm too poorly, what's the point?!

This is what scan time does - as I say my mind is broken, as is my heart to some extent. I am exhausted with it. I have had enough. But there is only one way I get out of this.... so I keep going.

For now, I’m trying to sit inside the uncertainty without letting it crush me, but at times it is winning. Winter isn't helping, I am aware of that and soon Spring will be here with lighter evenings. I've not been able to see Tigger, go horseriding or cold water swimming for way too long.

I’m trying to be gentle with myself when the fear explodes into arguments, into tears, into panic. I’m trying to remember that none of this means I’m weak or ungrateful or “not coping well enough.” It means I’m human, living with a cancer time bomb, loving my daughter, and wanting as much from life as I can possibly get.

If you’re reading this and you’re in scan limbo too you’re not broken. This is hard. Unfairly, brutally hard.