Emotional turmoil

I know I've talked about my struggle working in oncology but it doesn't seem to be getting easier or better with time. Each time I work there I have at least one young patient and it's just way too close to home. This last time I had a young 40 something that was dying from breast cancer that had metastasized to basically everywhere. Her family, and quite honestly, she herself was not ready to accept the fact that she was dying and there is not much else that medicine can do for her at this point. On the one hand, I tried to make her as comfortable as possible and really tried to incorporate her family in the whole process. Their anger at her situation was palpable, I understood the anger which in turn helped me not take anything they said personally. On the other hand, her situation scared me as my future is still a bit uncertain. I thought a lot that shift about what I would want my last days to look like, how I would want things to unfold. I handled my assignment fine throughout the day, it was after the shift was over that I had a hard time processing everything. I had my cancer support group the next afternoon and found that too to be a difficult time. Many of the women in my group are stage 4 and have less than 20% chance of beating their cancer, those are hard odds to face daily. I'm trying to keep my fears in check as I walk through this transitional time, it's not easy. I think throughout treatment I was very guarded and tried not to get my hopes up too much that this would work. I didn't want (and still don't) to ever experience such disappointment like I did when I found out the type of cancer I have. To find that the ONE thing I had been thankful for (and that was not easy to find) was suddenly gone, left me with an emptiness I don't ever want to experience again. The further I get out from treatment, I find that I'm dropping a bit of that guard and starting to hope for a cancer free future. It's scary to hope for something that I have very little control over. In my situation, we are in some uncharted territory as no one knows the significance of the CA-125 blood test. I'm not sure I want to go through check-ups every three to four months, go through the emotional turmoil when we aren't sure if these tests will be helpful or not. I'll do my check up in March, but I'm going to talk with Dr P about maybe just doing scans twice a year. The reality is that if I can make it to the two year mark and remain cancer free, I have a very good chance of beating this. If I don't....we did the most aggressive treatment available and Mark and I will have a lot of decisions to make about how we want the future to unfold. People can live a long time and simply manage their cancer but you have to be willing to accept a different type of quality of life....and I'm not sure I'm there. I'm living in a strange place mentally and emotionally right now, trying to find a balance. Here's my dilemma, if I knew for certain that treatment didn't work, I would certainly live differently. I'd probably be more selfish, do the things I want to do rather than the things I feel I should be doing, spend way more time with family, and eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. :) Because I'm living in this unknown time period I'm trying to find a balance between both worlds. I guess this is something that everyone battles as no one knows the exact date of their last breath, it's just on my mind a lot more these days. I don't want a lot of regrets at the end. I'm not sure that working in oncology is a good thing for me right now. I find it interesting that whether I'm working in oncology or ICU, I ALWAYS have a patient with cancer. I wonder if God is trying to help me continually face my fears....I'm sure there is a reason that even in ICU, I'm getting cancer patients.