After the treatment finishes then what? (Dr Peter Harvey)
01 Overview
This section of the website is designed for people who are regaining their life after treatment for cancer has finished.
This can be a particularly difficult time, often made worse by the feeling that support is no longer available, needed or your right.
The ideas and information that follow are designed to help and support you in dealing with the challenges that this period brings. Although written primarily for people who have experienced treatment directly, it may also be helpful for relatives and friends (and perhaps even for healthcare professionals).
It is important to stress that the information on this part of the site relates to adults who have been diagnosed with cancer as adults. The psychological issues for children and younger people dealing with cancer, its treatment and the aftermath is not covered here.
Imagine a roller-coaster. Some of you will find this an exciting and thrilling image: others of you will find it terrifying and beyond belief that anyone in their right mind would willingly subject themselves to the torment of being transported at high speed and with great discomfort in this manner. Some people find this a helpful image to represent the process of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
On a roller-coaster, you are strapped in and sent of into the terror, knowing that there is nothing you can do about it until you emerge, wobbly and battered at the other end. You manage by getting you head down and dealing with it as best you can at the time. It is only afterwards, when you are back on solid ground again, that you can look back with amazement and view what you have experienced and marvel at your courage.
This seems to be an analogy for what happens after diagnosis of, and during treatment for, cancer. The end of the ride is equivalent to the end of treatment. And this is where we start - after the treatment has finished and at the point where you can begin, bit-by-bit, to deal with all that you have been through and all that is to come.
You may have had to endure months of treatment by knife, chemicals or radiation until you are probably sick of the whole business, both literally and metaphorically. Now is the time to heal, both body and mind.
The Cancer Counselling Trust has now closed.
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