Chemo (capecitabine) and Work (teaching)

Mlle A 8 days ago

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Hi everyone,

This is my first post here. I hope are all well today. I have recovered well from bowel resection surgery and was planning to return to work in a school after Easter. I now know that I will have to do a 6 month course of capecitabine.

Does anyone have experience of working through treatment, particularly as a teacher? I am a full time secondary school teacher and am worried about the infection risk of the school environment. That being said, I feel I need to be doing something to keep my mind active as I have never been off work for so long before.

My school have been amazing and are not expecting me to be in.

I might be naive in thinking I’ll be able to cope well enough to focus my mind on anything so I’d be so grateful to hear of anyone’s experience or advice.

Thank you ️

L2025 7 days ago

Hi Mlle A

Fellow teacher here. Glad to hear that you’ve recovered well from surgery - I’m currently recovering from a hysterectomy.

I understand your concerns about the risk of infection in the school environment. I needed to stop working a while before surgery as I caught a nasty virus (I was only away from home for work so assume I caught it at work as nobody at home had been ill but pupils had been ill) and I was too ill for surgery until about 48 hours before my surgery was scheduled so didn’t know until the last minute whether I was well enough for surgery to go ahead or whether it would have to be delayed (and this was without a compromised immune system). I was lucky that I recovered enough to be cleared for surgery just in time as I really didn’t want to delay.

I don’t have personal experience of chemotherapy, but I do know other teachers who wanted to keep active during chemotherapy so their schools arranged non-classroom opportunities such as planning/updating schemes of work, planning CPD/inset sessions, planning trips/events, marking mock exams, etc. This also gave flexibility of working on days/at times when feeling okay and resting when needed without any pressure.

Best wishes for the next stage of your treatment. I hope you find a way of keeping active that works for you.

Louise x

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