On MBSR, Sometimes You've Just Gotta *Choose* to be Happy

 This is a series of posts about post-cancer treatment life.  I post them on Thursdays, and this is post #4. 

Guess when my resting heart rate was 73 bpm? Yes, exactly, it was the day between when I had the CT scan and when I got my results. The stress of a medical test physically affects me.  I wonder how much higher my heart rate would have been if I hadn't started using yoga and MBSR to try and keep it under control. 

One of the most insidious things about having had cancer is how your mind can always find a reason to worry, a reason to look gift horses in the mouth, a reason to go looking for trouble.  This time around I thought I'd done an excellent job of mitigating most of the anxiety. On a scale of 1-10, I was at a 6 even during the time between when the test was complete and when I got the results.  This was a huge improvement over past tests where I would be at an 8 for a couple weeks before the test and then at a 9 on the day the results might show up. 

Looking back at early April, maybe I made a mistake with my mitigation strategies because one of the stories I told myself was that once the scan was done and I got the results that I would enjoy a wonderful worry-free spring and summer.  So I should have been over-the-moon happy when I got my results because my body was completely unremarkable! That is exactly what you want to see in a radiologist's report.  I  did have a very nice weekend, and then (cue foreboding music)  I had my regularly scheduled appointment with my Medical Oncologist. I go every three months and each time they take blood and run tests (CBC, CMP, and CA-27-29 this last one is a tumor marker test). 

While waiting for the results of the blood work, my brain completely forgot that I just had a completely clean scan of everything from my neck to my thighs, and I got stuck in the most draining anxiety spiral, based on nothing!  Then as my bloodwork came in, I poured over it, got worried about numbers that were normal but not the same as last time, googled terms and conditions.  In case you don't know this already if you google anything medical related one of the top three answers is always:

YOU HAVE CANCER.

I tried to use mindfulness, yoga, running, journaling, but it was like I was experiencing a rebound headache, only it was rebound anxiety, and all the anxiety I thought I'd avoided decided to show up.  I know it's not logical.  I had a scan, the scan was all good, then I had bloodwork and it was normal--and yet... and yet. 

I wasted a few days in a pit of pointless worry, and then finally was able to talk reasonably to myself. I said, any way you look at it, life is short.  Do you want to waste more time worrying for nothing? You wanted a clear scan, you got it. Then you wanted to make sure your bloodwork was good, and it came back fine. Then you wanted to see the tumor marker test result, and that was a little lower than last time, so that's great. But here you are, still worried.  You need to just choose to be happy, or not.

Each day I get to choose to be happy!  How great is that!  

On Mindfulness- Based Stress Reduction, Dumb Things My Brain Tells Me

 The entire reason I took the online Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction class in March was that I’ve known since January  I would need to have a surveillance CT scan before April 6th. The MBSR class was another tool I was pretty desperate to add to my mental health toolbox.   And as I have writing about previously, these measures have actually been helpful, which is fantastic because CBD oil and THC doesn’t work for me—a bummer since here in Illinois pot is legal and I would definitely get some cannabis gummies if they would reduce my anxiety. 

There are four days until the scan and currently, I rate my scanxiety as a 5 on a scale of 1-10. The kicker is that it’s not the actual scan that completely melts my brain, it's the time between when the scan is done and when I hear the results. Ack, just typing that sentence moves me up to a 6 of 10.  

The scanxiety will really ramp up on the night before the scan and the day of the scan, then once the scan is over it will drop. The worse time will be during business hours after the scan. At any moment my phone might show the doctor’s number as an incoming call and I won’t be able to hardly breath. Fun fact, since I won that Fitbit from the library, this time I will be able to see exactly how much my blood pressure spikes before the scan and when I get the results. 

As I was writing this post, I found my brain created a new trick to slip past some of my new coping mechanisms. Now my brain is telling me, I should be worried about the scan, because maybe worrying about it is what will make me have good results. In other words, I need to mentally suffer in order to earn a clean scan. How bonkers is that! I mean, top-notch terrible rationalizations there from my brain. So I am noticing this thought and I am allowing it to float on by as I remind myself:

Thoughts are not facts. Say it again: Thoughts are not facts.