There is something that happens when you have been living with stage four cancer long enough. You stop treating days as ordinary. You cannot afford to. Every morning you wake up, and your feet hit the floor, you understand in your bones that this day was not guaranteed. It is a gift. And you try, you really try, to treat it like one.
But some days carry more weight than the rest.
This Tuesday, May 20th, is one of those days for me.
Tuesday is my CT scan. If you are new here, let me explain what that means in plain language. A CT scan is how my doctors see inside my body and measure the status of my disease. It is the day the numbers and images tell the story that my symptoms can only hint at. It is, in my house, what I call the day I get graded.
I have been living with stage four cancer long enough to know the ritual of it. The days leading up to the scan. The way your mind starts to replay every ache, every odd feeling, every moment you thought to yourself, I wonder what that was. The night before, when sleep becomes a stranger.
Tonight, as I write this, sleep is a stranger.
I Have to Be Honest With You
I have built this blog on honesty. You have walked with me through the hard parts and the hopeful parts, and you deserve the truth tonight.
These past few weeks, I was not as disciplined as I should have been. I took a break from my physical therapy exercises. I had dessert more nights than I probably should have. I had ice cream. I pushed myself hard on projects and tasks when I could have been resting, healing, and focusing on my body. I let the business of living crowd out some of the work of getting well.
My body has endured a lot of pain through this journey. More than I always let on. And these past weeks, my mind has been pulled in too many directions. Distracted. Scattered. I have been chasing productivity when maybe what I needed was stillness.
Tonight I am awake with all of that sitting on my chest. My body is restless. My thoughts are full of the kind of quiet doubt that only comes in the dark, in the hours before something that matters.
I am nervous. I will say it out loud. I am nervous.
But I Am Also Grateful
Here is the other side of tonight, the part that keeps me from falling into the dark completely.
You have been praying for me. So many of you have reached out since my last scan to tell me you lifted my name up, shared my story, and held me in your thoughts. I have felt those prayers. On the hard days, I have genuinely felt them.
Since my last scan, I have also met people fighting their own battles with cancer. Families sitting in the same kind of waiting rooms I have sat in. And I have prayed for them too. We are a community, those of us on this road, and we carry each other.
I have tried to give back what I can. Through this blog. Through my memoir, *Still Here*. Through the comments and messages, I try to answer when someone reaches out in the middle of their own darkest valley. I ask myself tonight if it was enough. If I did enough. I do not always have a clean answer to that question.
But I have kept going. And tonight, that has to be enough.
The Words That Are Carrying Me Tonight
“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
— Psalm 23:4
And this, from Confucius, which I have come back to more times than I can count:
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
I have not stopped. Not once. Not through the treatments, the pain, the fear, the nights like this one. I am still here. I am still writing. I am still praying.
What Comes Next
Tuesday, I will walk into that scan with faith. I am confident the results will be positive. But I am also a man who has learned that confidence and nervousness can exist in the same chest at the same time. I am holding both tonight.
Whatever those results say, I am thankful. For my wife. For my sons. For every person who has read these words, shared this journey, donated to help cover the costs insurance does not cover, and prayed for a man they may never have met in person.
You have carried me on days I could not carry myself. I do not forget that.
I will share the results as soon as I am able. Until then, please keep me in your prayers this Tuesday.
I am blessed. I am still here. I am still praying.
— Wayne Schlicht