As my regularly scheduled appointments for cancer tests and examinations approach, I often reflect that it must be much easier for me to maintain a reasonable degree of equanimity than it would be if there were any hope of my surviving over the long term, much less being cured. After all, as I already know that I am going to die from my cancer, what really is there for me to fear in a new test result? I think of the apprehension in advance of receiving such test results others must suffer who have everything to lose-- those who have been diagnosed with less advanced stages of cancer or who have been treated with apparent success. In terms of dread, is not my path easier than theirs?
Nevertheless, starting a week or so before I am to receive a cancer test result, I find myself gnawed by growing unease. Although this unease is not as great as it was in advance of my bimonthly glaucoma tests, it is enough to unsettle me.
Currently, I find that my fear of the potential horrors of the process of dying has been pushed into the recesses of my mind by my dread of resumption of chemotherapy. But I have no doubt that dying, in its turn, will loom larger than anything I can now imagine.
