Tomorrow I’ll have a PET-CT scan plus a brain MRI to determine if my cancer has recurred. I’ve had around thirty scans of one type of another since my cancer journey began twenty-nine months ago. In my current clinical trial, I have a PET-CT every eight weeks and a brain MRI every six months.

You’d think scans would be old news to me by now. In some ways, they are. This past week was pretty normal in most respects, without undue anxiety or sleeping problems. My scanxiety’s been lessening as I accrue more months of NED (No Evidence of Disease) on Xalkori. Life continues to inch towards normalcy. At times I even forget that I have metastatic lung cancer.

I’m not totally immune to scanxiety, however. It finally hit me yesterday evening. When packing for my flight to my clinical trial in Denver, my brain seemed to fight me every step of the way. When hubby came home after working late, I couldn’t shift gears to get my packing prep out of his way. When I finally got to bed, I didn’t fall asleep for hours. When driving to the airport this morning, my mind kept wandering to somewhere other than the highway in front of me. When going through airport security with my oxygen concentrator, I couldn’t help remembering I was a lung cancer patient traveling for treatment.

Despite all that, I’m more hopeful than I’ve ever been going into a scan. I know I’ll likely have to deal with active lung cancer again eventually. Hopefully I’ve finally trained October not to bring me a recurrence (it has the past two years).