1) Recovery is so hard, man. So hard. The side effects from the drugs that are supposed to fix you are often so much more debilitating than the cancer itself. After I was discharged, I still had a lot of pain from my tumours (I had around 60-80 internal and external at that point) but the side effects from the drugs were so much worse.
2) The fatigue. Oh, the fatigue. How is it possible to be THIS tired? Where going downstairs to get a drink feels like an Everest expedition that required a 10-hour recovery period? Being in hospital for so long means you don't get to climb stairs for ages so when I got home, even getting upstairs was a huge challenge and required a stop halfway for a breather. I was sleeping 17, 18 hours a day easily but it wasn't a refreshing sleep. It was the sort where you wake up and still feel bone tired, where even smiling requires more energy than you possess.
3) Friendships. It's a funny thing, cancer. It's like a magnet. It either drives people away or pulls them in. A few of those who are driven away will stun you. Close friends who you think will be there for you drop out of your life and are nowhere to be seen. They get very busy all of a sudden and find every reason under the sun as to why they can't come and see you. But, at the other end of the magnet, people who weren't close friends before step up in ways you could never see coming. Unexpected people, those who you would never have guessed would be there, are suddenly your angels of mercy, bringing food, offering to come and clean your house, sending you flowers, hampers, cards, lovely messages or (on one particularly bad day) coming round just to give me a hug. Words will never be enough to say how much these people mean to me and how grateful I am. They know who they are and I hope they know I would go to the end of the earth for them.
4) Loved ones. Boy, is it hard on them. I think possibly even harder than on us at times. All they can do is sit back and watch helplessly and silently pray we don't die. And if we do, they are the ones who have to grieve and suffer the loss. They silently and tirelessly work as carers, bringing us this and that when we need it, sitting through countless appointments, driving countless miles to visit us in hospital and so much more. And the uncertainty for them, such as the call I had to make to Alex in the middle of the day telling him the doctors thought my intestine may have ruptured (it hadn't, thankfully, but he had to drop everything, leave work and rush to the hospital). Thank you, carers. You are so appreciated, even if we don't say it as often as we should.
5) It's an emotional rollercoaster. Not in the way you'd expect though. When you first get diagnosed, your brain goes at a million miles an hour working out what to do next. You go from disbelief to horror to dispair to determination to grief back to disbelief again in the space of about 10 minutes. But eventually, when you accept it, you focus on what's ahead and get stuck in. And weirdly, during treatment, there simply isn't time for many emotions. So I, like a lot of people, tend to get hit by everything once my treatment has finished. And it is a very weird feeling. To be told that you are NED - No Evidence of Disease - and to feel absolutely nothing positive, no joy and jubilation, is totally at odds with all logic. When you tell people your 'good news' and they hug you and say "you must be over the moon!" it's horrible to have to plaster on a fake smile and say "yeah, of course" while holding in the tears because the reality is you feel devastated for reasons you simply can't place. And all you can think is "what if it comes back? Why can't I enjoy this moment? Why can't I stop obsessing? What's wrong with me?". But the reality is, nothing is wrong with you and it is totally normal to feel flat after treatment. It is almost like PTSD. The shock of it all catches up with you finally, and post-treatment is a good time to consider counselling if you haven't already and think it might help. Macmillan and Maggie's Centres both offer this for free.
So yeah. Cancer totally sucks. Like we didn't know. But I strongly recommend everyone gets themselves a Doctor Cat who insists on following them literally everywhere, even walking slowly behind them on the stairs to make sure they don't fall over.
Offical Best Doctor Cat
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