I remember the minute my normal life dissolved around me. In the space of 30 seconds, the structure of my days melted away: one set of externally placed demands replaced by a timetable of treatment characterised by long days spent alone, frustrating waiting lists, rushed appointments with harassed doctors who never seem to have the time. The days soon began to fill with other demands: the need to research my condition and understand what was happening to my body, talking therapy to enable me to cope emotionally, acupuncture and hyperbaric oxygen therapy to support my body, meditation and trips to the Buddhist centre for my spirit. Slowly I became my own project, the outcome ultimately unknowable, but the goal to try and maintain mental equilibrium in the midst of uncertainty. We act as if life is predictable, knowable, delude ourselves that we can somehow control it for the sake of our sanity. A deeper part of ourselves recognises the lie but does not want to confront the reality of impermanence. A life threatening illness tends to bring with it a certain perspective, no more fucking around.

Time trickles on, days infused with the haze of the drugs. Used to the sociability of a busy clinical environment, I do not cope well with enforced isolation and inactivity. Meditation throws me a lifeline, but in the days following an infusion, even this effort is too much. I force myself to give my body the rest it needs, unable to concentrate on much, sleeping during the afternoons. Slowly as the days pass, I feel the effects of the drugs wearing off and my system reboots. A new hairless system with a medically induced menopausal temperature gauge that leaves me permanently flushing, my bald head a nod to the vulnerability of the newly born. I try not to care about my hair, aware of the pressure to be grateful in some way that I am still alive, a small price to pay. But the imposed change in my appearance bothers me deeply, I feel bereft, at the mercy of factors more powerful than I. My changed external appearance hints at deeper changes that I cannot see. My scars flame red, angry at the assault, a damaged vein carves its way down my forearm, my insides on fire. The drugs attack, my white blood cells falling prey to their advance, along with my liver and kidneys. Chest pain signals something wrong, indigestion indistinguishable to my mind from an impending blood clot. I pray that the damage is shortlived, fixable and that I make it out the other side in one piece. I have to remind myself that I am officially cancer free, no sign on any of my scans, but this makes the chemotherapy seem all the more abstract and surreal. There will be no way to track its efficacy, just a hope that it will have averted an imagined future recurrence, success measured by an absence of symptoms.

The concept of normality has shifted sideways as I come to terms with the reality of being a cancer survivor for the rest of my life. I mull over the important next steps of my treatment plan, trying to decide what to do with my lymph nodes. Reassurances from clinicians about the effectiveness of radiotherapy weighed against the invisible threat of infected nodes and the fear of lymphedema in my dominant arm. I’m trying not to think about the 10 years of hormonal therapy that comes after. I am protective of my body and desperate to escape unscathed and can’t bring myself to think about the longer term side effects.

I am not alone in this journey, it’s a well worn path with fellow travellers and lights along the way. Ultimately however, people can only walk along side you for a few steps at a time, no matter how much they want to carry you through. The learning that I cannot rely on external factors for my own wellbeing is a harsh, if necessary lesson. My equanimity in the face of such loneliness can come only from me. I spend time learning how to stop avoiding my feelings, to truly feel them, integrate them and then release them in the hope that this will help, a work in progress. I see the love of my life alongside me, inhabiting his own personal version of this new reality, the same but different. I desperately want to ease the burden on him, take away his pain, extract him from the demands of family life, knowing that his problems are no more solvable than mine.

If surgery is the action part of the movie, then chemotherapy is a freeze frame. Friends continue their lives around me, summer fun materialises and passes me by. I am limited by my reduced battery, imprisoned by the constant threat of neutropenia. My time is measured from cycle to cycle and I claim the good days when I can. I walk the hills, ride my bike, revel in nature and the extravagant summer beauty on display from my bedroom window. I continue with my daily gratitudes, try not to resent what’s happening, but can’t quite escape the feeling that a year of my life has been stolen. The effort to maintain a positive mental outlook at times eludes me. The insistent terror of the first few weeks, replaced by a weary desire to wake up in a different reality where all of this is over. I swear never to take the boring predictability of every day life for granted again.