Waiting...

I'm in a weird place right now. The treatments are over, but my shoulder blade and ribs started acting up again a couple of days ago, making it hard to sleep. I think my sleep is also disturbed because of other stressors, not the least of which is my upcoming visit to the medical oncologist on Thursday to get my scan results. I'm more nervous than I realized. I'm pretty sure that rather than get really bad news or really good news, I'll just get more inconclusive news. We'll see.

In the meantime, I have decided to use the next while to work on the psychological, social and emotional aspects of having cancer by taking advantage of some of the many workshops and resources that are available to me free of charge as a cancer patient. I've been trying out the first level of the popular "Healing Journey" series, started up by Alastair Cunningham at Princess Margaret Hospital. It's intended to foster "an active response to the crisis of cancer," and deals with relaxation, living in the moment and all that Eckart Tolle stuff. Some of it seems a little airy-fairy, but it's good to get together with others in the same boat, and there is a small study showing that people who've followed the program have lived longer than expected.

I've also signed up for a 10-week program at Mount Sinai Hospital called "Taking Charge," which is about diet and exercise for post-treatment breast cancer patients.

Another perk that's available to me is referral to psychotherapists for three free sessions, which I'd like to try. And there are any number of other workshops and counselling opportunities through the Breast Cancer Survivorship Program at Princess Margaret as well as Wellspring, the network of cancer support centres. For example, I've signed up with the latter for a couple of sessions on returning to work after treatment.

Of course, as someone once said to me, cancer support entails support but it also entails more cancer -- more opportunities to be immersed in a subject you'd like to simply forget. But I think I'm at the stage now where I'm so thoroughly immersed that I just have to learn to swim.