It doesn’t matter how tough or calm I may appear on the outside…when you have had cancer and you find a lump…and the doctors want a follow up right away all bravado goes out the door. It may be nothing..a fluke..a cyst even…but nothing stops your brain from thinking the worst case until you get the official results.

I try to be a positive person in all things. Even when I was going through the worst of it during chemo and radiation, I kept my outlook bright and my hopes held high. Don’t get me wrong, there were days when I failed miserably and I let the Enemy sit on my shoulder and let my mind wander through some pretty dark hallways for a little bit…but I never stayed there.

It’s been a couple of years for me being in remission. The clean bill of health was given to me in 2018 but it still lingers in the backdrop that it could always come back. A few months ago I started noticing some pain in my right breast — the same side George (my tumor) made homebase and the same side I had some pretty gnarly radiation shot through me. I thought maybe I bruised myself training jiu jitsu without even noticing but the pain hasn’t gone away. In fact, in the last month it’s been getting more painful and some funky things are happening in that area.

So right now I’m sitting at Kaiser, in the waiting room trying to hold the nasty thoughts from creeping in but man it’s hard. What if nothing is actually something…because it was a huge risk that the doctors talked to me about when we decided that I need to do radiation. What if this means I have to do chemo and surgery and all the side effects all over again? What if, what if, what if….

The only thing I can control right now is my mindset…If it’s something and not nothing well then — been there, done that — and I’ll just have to kick cancer in the butt AGAIN. The waiting is the hardest part…just like the lead up when you fight in a tournament. The fighting is the easy part, the waiting right before you go and the wait before the ref makes a decision is the worst…two weeks until I get a response and I can either spend it going over the worst case or I can keep on keeping on…

I could use the extra prayers not just for clean results…but to protect my mindset and Tim’s, too. This will be on his mind as much as mine so we could both use the extra support…

Isaiah 43:1 — “Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine.”

This post originally appeared on Breathing Again. It is republished with permission.