After the treatment finishes then what? (Dr Peter Harvey)
27 Regaining a sense of mastery and control
The overall theme of this site is summed up in this phrase. We have seen how some of the losses that you may have experienced can be regained a bit at a time and how some of the losses have to be acknowledged and incorporated into your new life view.
This is not a simple process nor a speedy one. It will take time - and probably much longer that you imagine. It will not be a smooth passage either - there will be ups and downs as in any life. You will begin to feel more confident over time and as you gain some distance in time from all the stress and trauma of your diagnosis and treatment.
What this site has tried to do is give a sense that the end of treatment can be as challenging a time as any that you experience. It is made more difficult by the profound physical and emotional assaults to which you have been subjected. And it is the time when the obvious sources of support are unavailable.
There is every reason for feeling frightened and out of control at this time. But you can manage this process in a way that may avoid some of the pitfalls. Regaining and rebuilding your strength - both physical and emotional - is a task that cannot be emphasized enough. That is your foundation. And taking the time to reflect, either with someone or on your own, about where you want to go from here, can begin to give you the sense of mastery and control that you may have been denied during the treatment itself.
One part of this is the process of putting the experience of cancer in its right place in your life. For months, it has dominated, been in control. Now is the time to begin the long, slow process of putting in it right box in your life - not forgetting about it, not denying its importance or power, not pretending it didn't happen. It has to be incorporated into your own life pattern and experience in such a way as to not interfere and interrupt any more than it has to. You accommodate and assimilate it into your self, not come to terms with it.
The reflective process may face you with choices about where to go from here. The exact path you choose (or the one that you have already chosen) is entirely a matter of personal choice and circumstance.
Some of you will become stalwarts in the voluntary sector, helping others by running and managing support groups and becoming activists in cancer care and cancer politics - others will want to leave that part of their lives in a separate compartment and distance themselves from that experience. There may be constraints on what you can and cannot do, and that has to be built in.
Running the London Marathon may not be everybody's dream and it may even be a physical impossibility. But there are other aspirations and hopes that you will have fostered during your life. This may the time to review those and make some choices - some may remain dreams, some will be less important than before, some may take on a greater value, some will become a reality. They are yours and yours for the making.
The Cancer Counselling Trust has now closed.
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