Strangely brutal

The hardest part of cancer treatment can come after it ends.

There is something strangely brutal about finishing cancer treatment. For months, your life revolves around appointments, scans, blood tests, infusions, surgery, radiation and medical teams.

You are constantly being monitored, and there is always another appointment to get through, another milestone to reach. Then suddenly, you finish. But your body doesn’t necessarily know that the treatment is over.

Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery are lifesaving treatments, but they can also leave a trail of damage behind. Your body has been through an enormous physical assault, and recovery can take far longer than anyone expects.

There can be exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. Pain, numbness or tingling from nerve damage. Changes to your body that can make you feel like a stranger to yourself. Hormonal changes, weakness, digestive problems, changes in your skin and hair, and a general feeling that your body simply isn’t working the way it used to.

During treatment, survival gives you something to focus on. Afterwards, there can be space for everything you didn’t have time to process. Fear of recurrence. Grief for the person you were before cancer. Anxiety about every ache and pain. Changes in relationships. Changes in your identity. The realisation that life has changed, even though everyone around you seems ready for you to simply move on.

I’ve had to learn that recovery isn’t about suddenly getting back to who I was. It’s about slowly discovering who I am now.

I have had to remind myself that I couldn’t walk properly not so long ago. That matters when I feel frustrated that I can’t immediately return to the level of fitness I had before treatment. Trying to force my body back to where it was only left me injured and struggling even more.

Recovery requires patience. It requires compassion for a body that has been through something extraordinary. And it requires recognising that finishing treatment is a milestone, not the finish line.

If you’re in that strange space after cancer treatment where everyone thinks you’re “back to normal” but you don’t feel anything like normal, please know that you are not failing at recovery. You are recovering. And that takes time.

Your body deserves the same patience after cancer that you gave it during treatment.

Love, Michelle