Sorry to everyone to whom I have failed to reply or respond recently. It sounds counter-intuitive, initially, but the side effects continue to get worse after treatment stops - in my case exactly one week ago - and I just have not been able to reply to anyone about anything. The nature of the treatment especially radiotherapy, is such that it continues to roll on inside you even after the input has stopped. Think radiation sickness, Chernobyl, Fukushima .....
My neighbour, who has been through this, warned me that the two weeks after treatment would be the hardest. He is right but boy, I did not think he was going to be this right. This is the first day I have felt remotely able to write anything, even short. Great that the treatment is done, and in a way I guess I had to focus on getting it done and not think too much about afterwards, but it is dawning on me now that the road will be a lot longer than I thought.
When this whole business started, a breast cancer survivor said to me two things that really stuck with me.
Firstly, she said "This is going to be the hardest fight of your life." Er, yup...
Secondly, she said that the way to envisage the treatment was maybe like climbing a mountain: sometimes it seems hugely steep and just insurmountable, but you just focus on keeping going, step by step, not on the totality of the ascent. So in my mind I said completing each week was like getting to the next camp on the way to the summit - and there was even a little break each weekend to help that feeling that you had arrived at the next camp. But the analogy can be taken further.
After reaching the summit, you have to get back down. (In mountaineering, ascents do not count unless you get back down alive.) And whilst you have achieved the summit, you are exhausted and descending is not that much easier than ascending. It is still cold and the air is still very thin and you do not feel better at all, in fact you feel worse. All you know is that you have to get keep going and get down to an altitude where you can breathe more easily and feel the warmth of the sun. Depending on the weather, you don't know whether this is at camp 4, 3 or even 2 on the way down. You just have to keep going.
