Last week was our toughest since last October. Our long series of clean MRI’s was broken, and that sent us into a difficult place emotionally. We feel better now, and ready to face whatever may lie ahead.
Anticipating the finish line has a strange effect on people. Examples are abundant, especially in the world of sports. Three great teams are virtually tied entering the final phase of the English premier league soccer seasons. Last weekend, inexplicably, two of them lost home games to lesser opponents. Alan Shearer wrote on the BBC website that you could almost hear panic setting in to the dressing rooms. That is the finish line effect.
More graphically, last year video emerged of a runner leading a marathon race into the final straight. Imagine running for 40km and then seeing the crowds and tape and banners ahead. But something affected this poor runner, and he took a weird right turn into a side street, to the consternation of the watching crowd. It is no surprise that several competitors passed him while he was on the wrong track.
I have experienced the effect many times myself, to the extent that I try to force my mind against distraction. Most commonly this used to occur during bridge tournaments, Competitors play for several hours, following a design enabling everyone to play the same hands but bot simultaneously. While the event is progressing, it is possible to roughly assess how you are performing, and I made quite an artform of this self-assessment. If I was playing in a prestigious tournament and felt that my partner and I were doing very well, a finish line might mysteriously appear in my head. Thoughts such as “Wow, we could win this thing” would enter my brain. Without fail this was a recipe for disaster. Results would immediately plummet. It happened time and time again. This was my own finish line effect.
Despite my best efforts, the finish line effect kicked in during the weeks leading up to our visit to my oncologist last week. He had been so (cautiously) optimistic for so many months. I had completed cycle twelve of chemo, offering the delicious prospect of being moved into a monitoring phase. The scans had been clean for over a year. I felt very well, perhaps better than I did before I had cancer. Exciting summer plans were ready to be finalised. Workers had already started upgrading work in our Portuguese villa, anticipating our permanent arrival later in the year.
The finish line beckoned. Just reading the last few entries in this blog would offer the warning clarion call. Due warnings were always posted about being ready for what could come at any time and about the tendency of this cancer to return quickly, but the general tone betrayed some expectation of longer good health. All this stuff about second chancers and Key Moments of Truth and alternative therapies gives me away. I could not help myself.
So it is no surprise that reality hit us with a thud last week. The oncologist remains optimistic, but found something in the latest scan that he wanted to monitor. I was to undergo a PET scan in early May, and in the meantime, I would face a bonus round of chemo. It is like buying bagels, you pay for twelve and get thirteen (although nobody has yet offered us any discounts on cycle thirteen).
Even though the prognosis is highly uncertain, we were devastated to hear this news. We had come to the meeting with all sorts of questions regarding monitoring, and suddenly these were rendered moot. The finish line effect had done its worst. I am not superstitious enough to believe that we brought this negative outcome on ourselves, but we surely let undue positive thoughts lessen our preparedness for the bad news.
We bounced back. My wife had a fortunate day off on Wednesday, so we were able to spend quiet time together, at home and on a walk. By that evening we are fully prepared once more to face our futures and to continue our policy of openness to friends. The bonus chemo cycle is proving quite straightforward, and now our main task is to stay patient until May 14, when we will visit the oncologist again to learn what the PET scan will have revealed. We will be very anxious that day while we are sitting in his waiting room.
Apart from the emotional anxiety, which we have learned to live with most of the time, our challenge has always been choose an appropriate timescale for planning. During the worst months we were reduced to planning only a few weeks ahead, but our timescale gradually expanded over the last twelve months. We always reminded ourselves that things could go wrong at any time, but we have been actively planning for the possibility of prolonged good health.
Should this change now? We recognise that we may have to adjust our plans, but for now we are carrying on with our preparations. Perhaps as an act of defiance, we just booked all our flights for our June trip to Europe. The workers are busy in our villa, and the anticipated date for our permanent move is still late September or early October. It helps to be able to anticipate this exciting future, even if such thoughts are more tempered by nagging doubt than they were a week ago. We remind ourselves that nothing has fundamentally changed, at least for now, so our plans should be substantially unchanged too.
We have been bitten by the finish line. The same thing will probably happen again. I am not sure if there is a way of avoiding the effect. We could have forced ourselves to think negatively, but only at the cost of much joy over recent months. We kid ourselves that we could have been more ready for the setback last week, but I don’t think human nature works like that. Finish lines screw us up, and we just have to put up with it, and bounce back as best we can.
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