No One Warns You About This Part of Cancer Recovery

You’ve finished treatment, the check-ins from friends and family start to trickle off, you’re anxious to get back to your life without cancer hanging around… what no one told you about this part.

While active treatment is often filled with the noise of appointments (so, so many appointments), tests and results, recovery is eerily quiet and still. Sure, you have to take your meds every day but that quickly becomes just part of the day to day but the chaos surrounding treatments is done and, while there is a bit of peace in the stillness, it’s also unnerving. Spending months (or years) in active treatment conditions your brain and body to be in fight mode. You’re powering through and then suddenly… nothing.

I tried to dive straight into the ‘before’ and quickly learned that it’s just not possible. So, instead, I’ve foond some new slower activities to do to quiet my mind and body. This blog in one of those things but I’ve also found a new joy in walking (without music!) and paying more attention to the things around me. It sounds silly but I’ve learned to appreciate the quiet moments after the months of chaos.

Possibly the most jarring thing about recovery that I wasn’t prepared for was the loneliness. When you’re in active treatment, it’s visible. Friends and family know that you’re doing surgery, radiation, chemo. They can sometimes see the evidence of that and they’re worried. When active treatment ends and the physical scars of treatments have faded and you’re proclaimed in remission, concern wans and you’re “ok”.

For you though, there is still a lot of turmoil. Endocrine (hormone) therapy is no joke and the unseen side effects of that can be devastating. For me personally the affect of tamoxifen on my moods turned me into a shell of my former self and I struggle through that a lot of days. The check-ins have stopped and it feels incredibly lonely to still be carrying the burden of cancer (which I don’t think ever truly leaves you).

So, do you carry on and put on the mask of “ok”? Are you open about how shitty you feel? Something in-between?

If no one told you, cancer recovery can be a lonely, silent, sometimes scary space.