Some days are harder than others. No longer at work, I feel as if I have been awarded a new job that nobody wanted. The duties consist of attempting to find out everything there is to know about breast cancer and staying alive; avoiding the terrifying pitfalls of internet cancer forums with their tales of infection, recurrence and secondary growths – whilst somehow still managing to eat healthily, exercise regularly, sleep well and maintain a positive mental attitude.

Yesterday we saw a different surgeon and a different nurse, and I felt the comfort blanket of continuity of care evaporate in an instant. She told me the cancer was bigger than they thought, and moved immediately to discussing my various surgical options. I work for the NHS, I understand the horrific pressures they now face due to the years of underfunding, but having to make such a life-changing decision within a twenty minute appointment was quite an ask. Luckily I had researched my options and I pushed for the outcome that I felt most happy with – no, I don’t want an implant thanks, and I’d rather you didn’t take the lateral dorsal muscle from my back, I’m a climber, I need that and yes please, I’ll have the full mastectomy if it means I can avoid radiotherapy and the prospect of further operations. Yes, I’ll go through the bigger pain now thanks. They show me pictures, assure me that I have chosen the ‘Rolls Royce’ option, tell me they will arrange for me to meet the plastic surgeon, but that they can’t yet give me a date. They eject us back out into the autumnal sunshine and I marvel at the fact that the idea of having to have a major operation in the next few weeks is now something that I feel strangely happy about.

I’ve struggled with health anxiety since I had the kids. At first I thought there was something physically wrong with me – the tightness and pains in my chest and the hyperventilating must mean there was something terribly awry. The doctor was kind but my blood tests all came back normal. It came to a head one day when my eldest was a toddler – I couldn’t get my breath at all, convinced I was dying, I hyperventilated until my hands started to claw and I felt as if I was having a stroke. On my own with my precious little boy, I called an ambulance.

It was only once the paramedics had checked me over carefully and monitored my heart that it slowly began to dawn on me that the problem was with my mind rather than my body. Months of full-blown health anxiety followed as I was deluged with hundreds of intrusive thoughts about illness and dying every minute of every day. I would poke and prod myself convinced that I had liver or ovarian cancer, if my heart skipped a beat I was about to have a heart attack, every ache and pain must be leukaemia. I had CBT and the therapist wanted me to click a clicker every time I had an intrusive thought and I laughed at the impossibility of such a task. It was constant and all consuming.

Eventually I responded to the treatment, and recognised that behind all this lay a deep fear of not being there for my children. My own mother had suffered with chronic ill health for her entire life and I lived in the shadow of her anticipated death constantly as a child. Previously fairly reckless and self-destructive, as soon as I had my own children I realised just how important it was to stay alive and my psyche went into overdrive.

This is the background to my cancer diagnosis. My treatment for health anxiety decreed that I would only reenforce my intrusive thoughts if I gave into my need for reassurance by bothering the GP with every little ailment. When the doctor told me that there was nothing to worry about, I didn’t insist that he refer me for a scan because I thought it was just my head playing its normal tricks. I accepted his calm assessment that there was nothing wrong because I was terrified that there was. I only went back to the GP because my lymph nodes kept swelling up and a wise colleague asked me why I wasn’t going to go and get this checked out. This time my body really was trying to tell me something and I almost ignored it.

It turns out that sometimes your health anxiety is actually your intuition desperately setting off alarm bells. My therapist used to talk to me about allowing myself to believe that I could cope with the worst case scenario. People keep telling me that I am strong, but I don’t really know what they mean. Sometimes my anxiety is so bad that I shake physically, I cry often, and I am so very scared of losing everything that I love. My Mum faced her own death earlier this year with such awe-inspiring bravery and serenity that it’s hard to see how my own response compares.

Two weeks ago when I was diagnosed I felt as if I had fallen into a bottomless pit. Since then I realise that my fall has been broken by the outstretched hands of those I love. If I have strength, this is the source of it.