So I guess at sometime in our lives, we’ve all had anticipation anxiety.

You know – the apprehension you feel when waiting for information, or results, or feedback. That horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you’re waiting for something important. Every fibre of your being is screaming out “just tell me!!!” in the hope that knowledge may relieve your anxiety.

I think we all have a little Jiminy Cricket-type fellow that lives inside us. He doesn’t show up on x-rays, ultrasounds or MRIs (God knows – I’d have seen him by now if he did). He lives somewhere where he can’t be seen – but he makes damn sure he can be heard. He whispers strange messages into your head so that no matter how hard you try to block him out, his message gets through clear as a sunny morning in winter.

He’s a tricksy devilish little fellow this Jiminy Cricket and between you and me (but don’t tell anyone else), I think he has a personality disorder. Sometimes he’ll say – “oh if it was bad news, you’d have heard by now – nothing to worry about”. So you relax and maybe, just for a brief second or two, you maybe start to wearily drift off into the warm welcoming arms of Morpheus…

But then, not 2 minutes later, he’ll pipe up again “no – if it was good news they’d have told you – the reason they’re waiting is because they want to tell you face to face”. All of a sudden, you’re wide awake! And you’re lying there (he seems to be doing most of his work around 3am while you’re in bed but can’t sleep – probably because you’ve got this bugger whispering in your ear all night!) and you’re thinking – “Hang on a minute buster!!! You just told me everything was going to be alright!! You two-faced wazzock!!”. Morpheus, of course, has by this stage pissed off and moved to Utah. Certainly he’s nowhere near you, and even if he was, his arms would be folded and he’d have a scowl on his face that was about as welcoming as a dogfart in an spacesuit.

[Yes, I accept that was just a cheap artifice to get the word “wazzock” into one of my blogs, and it may not mean anything to you, but I feel immensely pleased with myself.]

OK – so where was I? Oh yeah…

So, you’ve got Jiminy Cricket chirruping in your ear (do crickets chirrup? Buzz? Chirp? Hum?) and any concept of mental equilibrium is now disappearing about as quickly as my chances of beating a sparrow in an arm wrestle.

And yet, awful as these tortures may be, perhaps sometimes, the lack of confirmed knowledge is a good thing. Because with knowledge comes finality. Either it’s good news or it’s bad news. When you finally gain one, you automatically lose the other. Once the decision is in, it’s final (and strangely, Jiminy Cricket is now nowhere to be seen or heard). Whilst you were waiting for results or feedback or whatever, there was always the hope that the outcome would be positive. But when the information or feedback or results come in, you no longer have hope, only confirmed reality.

Of course, that reality might be good and you can celebrate. But (and I’m not trying to bring everyone down here), in the world of leukaemia, it is always just a reprieve. When you are diagnosed, you know it is a persistent bugger and eternally unpredictable.

But those are things that you don’t need to contemplate or deal with until you are told you are at a particular stage, so as long as you don’t reach that stage, Jiminy Cricket will continue to live inside you until it’s time for the next blood tests and review. But you always have that hope…

You’ve heard the expression “it’s the hope that kills you”? Well I’m here to tell you that is rubbish. It’s the hope that sustains you. It’s hope that…well…gives you hope. It offers the prospect of a brighter outcome, a more positive possibility. Without it, we have only the certainty of inevitability – and in the world of CLL, that is not an appealing prospect.

So when it all comes down to it, maybe I should stop getting anxious any time I am waiting for results or feedback or whatever. What will be, will be. Just be at peace and accept whatever the result will be. I can then be free to enjoy the fact that hope springs eternal. Because it absolutely does – and I hope your spring is plentiful and refreshing.

Stay strong, Fight hard. Smile lots.

First published in January 2020 – apologies for any bad language. I wasn’t in the happiest place at the time.