Hey guys, welcome to Fluffy Town. No smoking, no farting, and no pillow fighting.

When I was little, on the coldest winter nights, I had this trick to get warm. It wasn’t “stay under the covers, weirdo,” which would have made the most sense. No, I’d wait until I heard the furnace kick on, and then I’d crawl out of bed and sit next to the heating vent. It was between my bed and my dresser, and I had just enough room to squeeze in with my knees bent to my chest. I’d pull my legs and arms into my shirt, tucking the end under my feet. The heat from the vent would be trapped inside my makeshift tent, billowing it out as I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. It’s still the coziest I’ve ever felt, safe in my warm little cocoon. 

I’ve been really craving that comfort lately. It makes sense. I’ve been in pain or uncomfortable in some way for months. I feel like lately I live for the moment each day when it’s finally time for bed and I can curl up under some blankets and drift away from reality for a bit. (I know that sounds sad but it’s been really cold lately so I basically have been living in a blanket nest.)

Unfortunately, I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. Part of it is my own fault for staying up too late, staring at my phone, but TikTok is really addictive and I just can’t help myself. It’s not all because of TikTok, though. Mostly it’s that I can’t quiet my mind.

Last night, I was preoccupied with how life will change now that I’m starting to feel better. Joe and I used to take day trips almost every weekend when the weather was nice. Just get in the car, drive an hour or two in one direction, and be gone all day exploring hiking trails or beaches or new-to-us towns or even just hopping from bookstore to bookstore all day. In that time, of course, we’d have to eat because that’s what humans have to do to stay alive, a fact I’m becoming more and more annoyed with. And I just kept thinking...how am I going to navigate that, when the time comes? My diet is so limited right now. I basically eat stuff like smoothies and yogurt and applesauce all day. Sure, I can take that stuff with me on a shorter trip, but what happens if we want to go on a longer trip? Or to a restaurant? If we’re staying in a hotel, and my diet is still limited, will there be things I can eat? 

It honestly sounds so exhausting to go anywhere. Too exhausting to even navigate at this point. I don’t want to have to worry about something as necessary as “will I be able to eat anything?” every time I go somewhere, but that’s kind of the reality of my life right now. It’s a real drag. 

I didn’t really think about these logistics until fairly recently. I haven’t felt well enough in a long time for Joe and I to take a trip longer than an hour or two, so I haven’t had to worry about food during that time. But now that I’m feeling better and daylight is stretching its legs a bit more each day, I find myself itching to explore again. And that means needing to figure out what food to take with me so I don’t pass out or starve to death. 

Here’s the other reason I can’t sleep: I have my first CT scan since treatment next week. Mostly I can keep my mind off of it. The day offers lots of distractions. Work. Books. Meal prep. My silly little walks. But at night, I can’t help but worry. What if it’s bad news? What if they didn’t get it all, or it comes back? My diagnosis knocked me flat, I don’t know if I can do that again. I can feel myself starting to freak out whenever my thoughts get too deep into the “what ifs” and I have to walk myself back before I start hyperventilating. Just FYI, contemplating your own mortality is not a good remedy for insomnia.

I find it difficult to imagine that I could still have cancer, because I’ve been feeling so much better. This is a ridiculous line of thought, I know, because I felt absolutely fine before my diagnosis, when I most definitely did have cancer. Sometimes I look back at photos of myself in the months before I was diagnosed and think, “I had cancer in this photo,” like I’m trying to reconcile those memories with what I now know.

I feel like I’m in limbo until I get those CT results. I’m operating like things are fine, but the reality is...the cancer could come back. And that’s terrifying. Even if I get good results on this CT scan, I’ll have another in three months, and then another three months later, and then maybe I’ll get to go six months before the next one, but this is my life for at least the next five years, because that’s how long you have to go before they’ll say you’re in remission. 

Five years is a long time to worry, which is why I’m trying my best not to spend too much time in the freak out zone. I can’t control whether it comes back. If I could, I would have just…NOT gotten cancer in the first place. My impulse after I found out I had cancer, as someone who wants to fix all problems she comes across, was to immediately wonder what I could have done to prevent it. There must have been something, right? But I keep thinking back to what my surgeon told me the day I met her. She’d just explained the treatment and I was trying to hold it together. She put her hand on my arm and just said, “You didn’t do anything to cause this and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it, and I’m sorry that this happened to you.” 

At the time, I didn’t realize how badly I’d needed to hear that. I hadn’t realized I’d been blaming myself for getting cancer. There must have been something I could have done to prevent it, I kept thinking. Why couldn’t I have just done that? Even now, I want to keep examining everything for the root cause, even if the root cause is…just bad luck. I’ll probably never know, and that’s the hardest thing to live with. That, and I’m still coming to terms with the fact that it’s not just like…BOOM you don’t have cancer anymore, you’re all healed up, great job. This is something I’ll be dealing with for the rest of my life. Recovery is forever.

And this is why hiding in a blanket fort seems like the most logical course of action right now.