I am standing in a well lit room. There are no windows, only a door, open to another room. The next room is pitch black, no light enters and I don’t know what is in there, only that I must go in. I’m terrified. That is all I remember from the dream.

I get a call at 7:45am from the Oncology Department to schedule a consult for next Tuesday morning. Too soon! I won’t have had the tests yet, I say. The nurse says that there’s a Thursday slot which should work instead. I panic. Too soon! I was not expecting to meet with Oncology until the following week. Now I feel like I am being pushed into the dark room well before I am ready.

I begin work but after my first call I find myself tearing up and I am unable to get it together. I message my Team Leader Mk and bail on the rest of the day. Throughout the afternoon I get an appointment scheduled for a Full Body CT scan on Monday and the Oncology Consultation is confirmed for Thursday. I feel stressed and anxious and realise that the stress never really went away yesterday, it just dropped slightly from critical to extreme.

I can’t stop crying. Susannah is feeling the same. It’s not sadness about any one thing. It’s an all encompassing feeling of grief that I just can’t shake.

C is for sad, Susannah says.