I woke up two hours ago needing to look up a word in the dictionary. I needed to know if abrogate was a word. It is. I don’t know why I woke up with the need to google a word. These things happen. Several nights ago, I woke up and had to take a shower. I don’t know why I had to take a shower but before I could even question the logic, I was standing under the hot, pulsing water. Night can do odd things to a brain.

Fear of things both real and imagined is keeping me up now. Kept me up last night, as well. I had a full body bone scan today, actually yesterday. My oncologist wants to see if the cancer, which spread from my left breast to my spine, is back. She wants to know if the injections I have gotten every month have done their job, if they have strengthened the bone enough to fend off the disease.

If the medicine has been successful, the last of the major medical treatments and the last constant, ongoing trips to the doctor’s office, ends. I get to have months between visits rather than weeks. If the treatment has not been successful…I don’t know. It depends.

Obviously, I would like a nice, clean scan result. I desperately want to end my monthly treks to the oncology office. I want to end the waiting room minutes that seem like hours. The multiple sticks and pokes and bruises and pain that remind me of how sick I was and how sick I could be again. I’m tired of doing everything I can to not meet the eyes of the bald people and of feeling like an asshole for it.

I’ve had almost two and a half years of constant treatment. I’m ready to put some distance between me and this horrible, horrible thing that has happened, that is happening, that will always be happening to me.

So, I lay here and I stare at the wall and I wait.