Why cancer is harder after cancer is over

F*ck you chemo! I expected to feel relieved. But I didn’t.

Having cancer is undeniably terrifying, life changing, and lonely. But what no-one tells you is that many - most? - cancer patients find it harder once the treatment is all over.

Why?

It doesn’t make sense. Treatment is done. You’re (hopefully) in remission. You’re cured. It should be a time to celebrate, put it behind you and move on.

But it isn’t.

Life after cancer is just as terrifying, lonely and brutal for most of us. Particularly since we’re expected - and we expect ourselves - to bounce back to normal. Oh you’re done chemo, woohooo. Champagne. Last radiotherapy, yey. Let’s party.

It doesn’t work like that.

I walked out of my last ever chemo (hopefully!), stuck a finger up at the oncology ward door. And stepped outside to start my ‘new life’. But instead of feeling relieved and happy to have finished. I felt nothing.

Flat (literally!). Unemotional. Sick. Terrified.

After 6 months of gruelling chemotherapy, I was mentally and physically done. I had given it my all and there was nothing left. I felt like a shell of my former self and couldn’t imagine feeling - or looking - normal. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

A few weeks later, after 5 weeks of radiotherapy, my lovely friends presented me with a wonderful gift. It was so amazingly kind. But just wanted to cry. Run away and hide. I was broken. Sore. Burnt. Exhausted. Beaten up.

Who is this girl in the mirror? Post treatment, not yet ready to celebrate.

A few months later, I had another surgery to remove my ovaries. In my mind, that was the last hurdle in a long road. I was so ready to recover. But the surgery took more out of me than I was prepared for. I went on holiday to celebrate too soon. It was too much. I wasn’t ready.

And then, I hadn’t factored in menopause and hormone therapy and how that would change me, forever.

When you finish treatment, you’re chucked off the runaway train that is ‘cancer’ and left to fend for yourself. Literally spewed out into the street, on your own, with nothing but a check up appointment in 3 months’ time.

For me, the months after cancer were worse in many ways than during treatment. When you’re in active treatment, you surrender yourself to medicine. You just do what you’re told, take the drugs and do your best to survive and maintain some sort of normality.

Your life is a whirlwind of blood tests, appointments, chemo, radiotherapy, scans. Barely a day goes by without some sort of medical thing. You are surrounded by doctors, nurses, friends, counsellors. All with a joint purpose. A collective mission.

Let’s fight this beast!

And then it stops.

The come-down is intense.

During cancer treatment, you expect to look like a cancer patient. But even months afterwards, you still look in the mirror and don’t recognise the person looking back at you.

Cancer is a trauma and for many months, I felt very unconfident and unsure. You wonder if you’ll ever feel ok again. Everyone around you moves on and expects you to do the same. But processing trauma takes a long time. It’s no wonder many cancer patients seek support for PTSD.

You have to completely re-discover who you are. You have to heal. Rebuild. Process. Understand what the hell just happened. Get your head around what cancer is and what cancer means to you. Learn to live with the fear. Learn to love this new, alien body, that doesn’t belong to you.

Taking a moment to reflect on the new post-cancer me.

And you have to decide who you want to be. I have heard so many cancer patients say ‘I just want me back’.

But do you really?

Do you want to go back to exactly how you were before?

Probably not.

Surviving cancer is a wake up call. And if you’re lucky enough to come out of it with a positive treatment result, it’s an opportunity. But that in itself is scary. You need to decide if you have lifestyle things you want to change? Habits to kick? New things - wellness routines, hobbies, travel plans - to put into motion? Relationships to address? Career questions? Having cancer inevitably makes you ask yourself if you are you happy with your life.

And if there are things you want to change, now is your moment.

It’s huge. And it’s daunting.

Cancer doesn’t finish when the treatment is over. It’s a lifetime journey. You never stop being a cancer patient. The trauma will fade, the hair will re-grow. But you will never forget. And you can’t force the recovery process.

But you can learn from it. And you can turn it into a positive.

It just takes time.

Let me help you discover your post cancer you! I’ve been though it. Actually, I’m still going through it. It’s a forever process. But I can help. Get in touch.