After 3 years of chemotherapy I finally made it to the end of treatment. It was time to celebrate, to crack on with the ‘new normal’ of life, I was finished and I was alive!
Well that’s the theory. The reality, for me, turned out to be somewhat different. So I did party, a perfectly timed joint 50th with my husband was an absolute blast. A week later I was being carted off in an ambulance after ‘fainting’ in Epsom town centre.
Once more I was back in the side room in A&E, we call it the ‘Room of Doom’, where 3 years earlier I’d been diagnosed with leukeamia. The memories came flooding back. There followed a series of tests – a CT scan to check for brain abnormalities, a heart scan, the extraction of spinal fluid to check for disease, during which I was given a ‘just in case’ dose of chemo – hey, I’d rung the end of treatment bell, what was going on? After my shock leukaemia diagnosis it was easy to convince myself I had a brain tumour, or epilepsy, or a heart condition. Dr Google is a dangerous man!
Over the course of 2 weeks I tumbled in to a whole new anxious ridden world. Test results showed nothing physically wrong. I’d quite simply done too much too soon. My brain had finally woken up to what I’d been through over the previous 3 years. No longer faced with keeping going to the next treatment round, I had time to think, time to recall the horrors, time to reflect on how close I had come to dying.
The outside world expects cancer survivors to leap up from the sofa, write an amazing bucket list, and start galavanting around the world ticking everything off. In reality a lot of cancer survivors experience mental health issues, depression is common, as is anxiety. My diagnosis was something akin to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’d known that with fewer hospital appointments there was a possibility I’d feel lost and isolated, but I hadn’t expected to feel this low.
On top of that my body had had enough. It needed me to stop. In my excitement at reaching my second chance at life, my brain wasn’t listening to my body, which is why my body quite literally shut itself down. The flashing images that preceded my ‘faint’ was how it chose to do so, a very public smack in the face.
Anything beyond my house became too much, my vision would quickly go fuzzy round the edges. Anything more dramatic than ‘The Durrells’ on Netflix made me nervous, a reading book had to be very gentle. Watching the news, doing a Tesco order, being in the kitchen, made me physically anxious. My heart raced, I got hot, I felt dizzy. I couldn’t look at anything with a busy pattern on it, my husband wasn’t going to be wearing a checked shirt for a while, not one that I’d ironed anyway. I even got anxious about the spare bed being covered in the kids’ unwanted Lego, and my mother-in-law needed to sleep in it, admittedly not for 4 months, but how on earth would we get it sorted out in time!
A silver lining of having cancer is the support that can come with it. The Marsden treated my anxiety with the same care as they had treated my cancer. With their encouragement I went to Maggie’s at the Marsden where they listened to me for 2 hours whilst I cried about all sorts of ‘what ifs’, worrying about things weeks in the future, not wanting to let people down. Everyone had spent the last 3 years telling me what an inspiration I was, how strong I was, and yet here I was a gibbering wreck.
I also have access to a counsellor who’s been with me through the whole thing. I spent some of Christmas Eve chatting to him, working out some simple strategies to stop me sinking any further. For this I am very grateful, access to mental health support so quickly and for free, is a privilege, I fear for those who are forced to wait for months, or pay out vast sums on private support.
Self-help was necessary so read books that helped me understand my anxiety, and identified more strategies.
Over the coming weeks what I learnt was this.
I was lucky that I could take time out. I really could stop. I didn’t cook a family meal for 4 weeks. I didn’t drive the car for nearer 7 weeks. It wasn’t easy for anybody, but investing time recuperating was invaluable. It gave my body and my mind time to recover. I’m not cured, I still find shops and busy places overwhelming, I still have to pace myself gently though life, but I do have a structure by which I can start to rebuild life, and I have strategies to support me when things don’t go to plan.
The first trick was to get help early, and be open about how I felt. How many times, when asked how you are, have you replied ‘fine’, when actually you’re really struggling? How often do you just feel like the treadmill of life is going too fast and you want to get off? Our brains control our body, they are worth looking after, which is why the next trick for me is to keep going with all those strategies, that way I can give my second chance its best shot.
Worth a read:
‘How to Feel Better – Practical ways to recover well from illness and injury’ and ‘The Cancer Survivor’s Companion’ both by Dr Frances Goodhart and Lucy Atkins.
‘After the Treatment Finishes’ by Peter Harvey.
“Mad Girl – A Happy Life With A Mixed-Up Mind’ Bryony Gordon
