Ahh mate, what a shit show. I can't offer any practical advice, just some shared experiences.
I'm about 3.5 years out of treatment for head and neck cancer, Cisplatin and radiation to both sides of the neck. In the past year and a half I've developed new symptoms that I find disturbing but the doctors kinda trivialise. They say it's pretty much nothing, and to be expected.
The symptoms are pain and spasm related, and I worry a lot that it's triggered by some new anatomy (eg thyroid tumour - because my thyroid was massively screwed up by the rads). But I have to put faith in the medical team - their expertise and experience.
I've also experienced choking - but mine is mucus related. I got really bad mucositis during treatment, and I'm constantly coughing up chunks of phlegm, it's pretty much a daily exercise even now.
One night I had some acid indigestion, and I think a bit of an acid burp partially dissolved a chunk of mucus, which then slipped down and blocked my airway like a kind of malign gluey oyster. I woke up wheezing, only able to get about 10-20% of my normal amount of air down the pathway.
I gasp, wheeze, stumble, scare the family, and eventually the heavy aspiration clears the plug, it just kinda pops all at once (being carried down into my stomach I guess)
Since then - some anxiety sleeping, especially on my back (which is how it happened - and incidentally my most comfortable position). Often I go sleep alone on the couch because the head-rest elevates my noggin. But yeah, anxiety when lying in certain positions, anxiety about dying in my sleep.
Because I have these problems, and because they feel really impactful on my day to day life, it's easy to let anxiety about cancer recurrence start to nibble around the edges (or come from the periphery outright into the centre of your mind). I don't want to die. I have three young kids, if for no other reason I want to be there to look after them.
And I have to trust my doctors.
For me, cancer is as much a mental battle as a physical one. Yes, the treatment is paramount to saving your life, and there are no guarantees. BUT .. given that there are so few things within your control, one thing that you can try and take the reins on is your mental health.
I did a pretty good job, I was super strong throughout the treatment and subsequent recovery. Some nights nowadays, I feel the anxiety come nibbling, like a rat looking for weakness in the pantry wall … but I have to fight it.
I think distraction is a useful tool - take the thing you find most fun or rewarding in your life and dive into it. For me, as nerdy and pervy as it sounds in equal measure, that's rumpy-pumpy with the wife and burying myself in computer games.
If I find myself tossing and turning at 2 in the morning and I could let my mind run over and over the cancer stuff - I switch the brain off, fire up the computer, go into VR, and explore other galaxies (great game called "No Man's Sky"), or kill some zombies, or build some cities and try not to go bankrupt managing them .. or any other type of games - you get the drift.
I'm a little embarrassed by it .. but I've loved computer games my whole life .. if I ever needed an excuse to dive headfirst into them, I have one now.
I reckon with the anxiety you're experiencing, many would say "professional help"
Who knows, maybe that could help, maybe they could give you strategies you haven't already considered.
(Me, I say fuck that)
It sounds like you're a little bewildered about the magnitude and origin of the anxiety - perhaps because you've kept a solid lid on things up until now. My advice would be simple: find that lid and screw it back down.
Some folk might say that's avoidance, I say bullshit - it's compartmentalisation.
You can analyse your anxiety, you can think about death, cancer, any and all topics spiritual and terrestrial ---- but do it when you have a healthy mindset.
Me personally, I think for some of this stuff the best tactic is to wait it out. Kinda trick it into submission or abatement. Don't try to figure it out while you're suffering, unless you're in dire need and have thoughts of self harm and other heavy stuff .,. if it's inconsolable and unmanageable, reach out for help right away, concrete, professional help, I guess. (As well as support from anywhere else it's available)
But .. if it's sleeplessness, anxiety and other stuff muddling around in your mind - my advice is to compartmentalise, try and push that shit out the window for the immediate short term, get a bit of sleep, try and strengthen yourself over a few days, and look at it in the bright light of day when (hopefully) you're feeling a bit better having dealt with a few immediate short-terms (sleepnessness is bloody awful, it's a terrible side effect of anxiety - I reckon a lot of death certificates that read "suicide" could just as easily read "insomnia")
Everyone's wired differently, I guess my comments and advice are as if you are ME, and you're not. If any of it reads as really craptacular, shout it down. But yeah, I'd posit that maybe your worry isn't actually cancer, but worry itself. Sure you may have a physical problem, but in tandem with that, the anxiety is a slippery slope. If you can do ANYTHING to get in front of it, I'd just urge you to try, mate.
