I know I’m supposed to be in a good mood and feel so lucky it’s all over but I’m in a really bad place and struggling with the side effects. I can’t pretend that this is easy and I feel lucky any more. These last few days have probably been the hardest.
I wrote this in my journal a few days after I finished radiotherapy treatment for breast cancer last year. I assumed I’d be feeling on top of the world when my treatment was over, celebrating that any cancerous cells inside my body had been vanquished and I was able to resume my “normal” life.
I was supposed to feel happy and grateful. And I was grateful to be done with treatment, hugely grateful for the public health system in Aotearoa New Zealand and so very grateful that the cancer chapter was over, hopefully for good.
But, even as work deadlines ramped up again and I began to fill my calendar back up, it really didn’t feel like that cancer chapter was actually over.
Apart from having burnt, sore and broken post-radiotherapy skin, crippling fatigue (which would last for months) and the beginnings of lymphatic issues in the cancer boob (see red box page 55), it also felt like all the mental and emotional aspects of the experience were only beginning to hit me, just at a time when everyone was expecting to have the normal Síana back.
“Even as work deadlines ramped up again and I began
