After the treatment finishes then what? (Dr Peter Harvey)
04 The tasks of recovery
It may seem a bit daunting to see a heading like this - after all, you’ve just come through months of treatment and you were looking forward to bit of a break and now you read that you have even more work to do in order to recover!
This is not quite as frightening as it seems. One of the emotional threads that runs through much of the period from diagnosis to the immediate aftermath of treatment is that of loss.
There are many parts of your life that you may feel you have lost completely or partially, temporarily or permanently.
Often, one of the first things to go is a sense of control. For some of you the whole process from discovery of a symptom through to treatment was so fast that it must have felt as if you had no time to draw breath.
For others of you the process might have been a much more tortuous process. But in these and in many other cases there is an over-riding sense of loss of control of your life.
All of a sudden your life is taken over by a system (admittedly there to help you) but which works to its own rules and timetables. Your diary becomes filled with hospital appointments and clinic visits, often reaching well into the future if you are on a long course of chemotherapy.
Cancer itself sometimes produces a strong sense of uncontrollability and if you add that to the surrendering of control to the healthcare system, it is hardly surprising that there is such a overwhelming feeling of being out of control.
There are other losses, too. The treatment itself can produce losses of body parts - either permanent or temporary and a consequent change of body shape and sense of bodily integrity.
There may be a loss of independence as you become reliant on others to ferry you about to appointments or to get your shopping for you. This may also reflect a loss of position or status - your position in the family, as provider (financially, emotionally, practically) to your loved ones or your rôle at work may feel diminished by your new role as a ‘cancer patient’(see Survivor - what’s in a name?).
If your diagnosis has been a struggle and you feel people may not have taken you seriously (see Regaining trust in your body), or if you experienced a series of problems with the actual delivery of your care (cancelled clinics or lost scans, for example) you may be feeling that a system that you have trusted previously is not as robust and helpful as you had thought (see Regaining trust in the system).
You may have found that some people in your social network have not been as helpful as you wanted or might have expected; you may have found who your real friends are - and are not (see Regaining trust in the outside world).
During your treatment you may have found that the best way to deal with everything is to put your head down and just get on with it. You may not have had either the time or the energy to spare to try to deal with all the emotional and other issues that have arisen - you may have put them on one side to be dealt with at the time when you are feeling more up to it.
This is not a bad way of managing things. It is certainly true the the demands of treatment can take all your energy and there is simply no spare capacity to deal with anything else. Likewise, not everything needs dealing with right now - you can defer some problems until you need to.
A good example of this is concern about returning to work. If you are in the midst of a long treatment regime going back to work may be many months in the future. Unless there are work issues that absolutely must be dealt with now, it is sensible to approach them once your treatment has finished and you have more time and energy to focus on this important issue (see Returning to work).
Of course it’s not all about loss and gloom. There are other aspects of cancer, its treatment and the aftermath that can feel very different - positive and uplifting (see It’s not always all bad) but for many people these are offset by some less pleasant experiences.
One of the important aspects of dealing with cancer and its treatment is to acknowledge the losses (this is also covered in the section) as once these are acknowledged then it becomes easier to deal with the rebuilding and recovery process.
This website is aimed at helping you do this by addressing the tasks of rebuilding trust in your body, in yourself, in the healthcare system and in your social world.
As everyone is different you may only need to dip into the parts of this that you feel are relevant to you, but there is extensive cross-linking as very few of these losses occur in isolation.
The Cancer Counselling Trust has now closed.
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