Five Little Words

"I was bleeding after sex."

For twelve months, I have recited these five words each and every time I told somebody I had cancer. Only recently, I've come to understand why. When you tell someone you have cancer, there's a deep, guttural fear that overcomes them. They're scared it's going to happen to them. So, they ask you how you knew. Or, how they will know. What they should look out for.

As a result, I repeated the words "I was bleeding after sex" many more times than I ever expected. And to a whole range of people. Family, friends, coworkers, massage therapists. Anybody who asked. To me, those words became tightly tied to my diagnosis.

Bleeding after sex = cancer.

So, the other day, when I bled after sex, I panicked. It hadn't happened in a year. It hadn't happened since I had been diagnosed and treated. It hadn't happened since I had cancer growing inside my cervix.

My logical brain screamed at me that it was unlikely. It told me about clear margins and my last biopsy being negative. It told me over and over how I was probably fine. My emotional brain though had a different message. And it was loud. Louder than the logic. It yelled about how there was a one in five chance that my cancer would come back. That they check me every three months because it can come back. Most of all it screamed, "bleeding after sex = cancer."

I have a checkup in three weeks. So until then, the internal battle continues.