It’s not been a great week. Yesterday I juggled blood tests before work, doctor’s appointment after work. It’s become the new norm, squeezing life around appointments, or appointments around life.

Today I wrangled an inflexible phone clinic in my lunchbreak, to get my blood results to see if I could restart my treatment. My immune system is not sufficiently recovered to begin the next cycle. So fear kicks in, for the implications of delaying, the risk of infection, for the possibility that this form of treatment, which I tolerate fairly well,may not be sustainable long term. That I may need to look at the next, more aggressive option.

This evening I went from work to CT scan, the first I’ve had since diagnosis, to see how the treatment is working. I realised how blasé I am about medical procedures. I’ve had so many scans in my life, it’s like a conveyor belt. None are pleasant. I try hard not to succumb to “scanxiety” but it’s flippin hard not to, it really is.

Tonight, I bumped into someone I know at the diagnostic centre, she came out if the scanner I was about to enter. I saw the same fear in her eyes. We shared a brief hug, a few tears, a moment of shared experience, before I was whisked into the scanner.

Then the weird and really unpleasant sensation of the dye injection, holding breath, releasing breath, being pulled in and out of the machine, job done, back out into the street.

And I cried all the way home. For her, for me. For having all of this as part of life. For wanting a life without it all, where I could just go home after work and chill out. For hating the next angst ridden fortnight before I get my results. For the what ifs that flood my head.

Then, just before home, this shining moment. I spotted a buzzard sitting in the top of a tree by the road, silhouetted in the late evening light. I stopped, we looked at each other. A moment of sheer pleasure, then he flew.

And I realised that as long as there is buzzard, tree and evening sunlight, I can get through this, no matter how hard it is, how overwhelming. I can. Because fear and beauty are both true, both real.