Mental Head

Since finishing chemo, I've been a mess.

Eveyone around me kept saying 'its over, just radiotherapy to go and its all over' but yes for everyone it 'is' all over, but for me, it's just the beginning.

It's the beginning of the rest of my life, frightened that cancer will return.

I'm too scared to go back to my normal life; driving to work every day as if nothing had happened. I can't do that, because there's something permanently on my mind....

So I've been breaking down in tears everytime I think about it and putting on a brave face in front of everyone else so that no-one worries. This isn't healthy, I know. And its just got worse and worse. My fears snowballed into a pathetic fear that I was going to find out I had cancer again very soon and how was I going to deal with it. I played the moment in my head over and over again and I'd break down at the thought of having to tell my parents that it was back.

Basically what I was doing was torturing myself about nothing, creating a fear of something that wasn't actually happening. I felt ridiculous but couldn't face talking to anyone in case they thought I was nuts, so it became a vicious circle.

So I convinced myself that I was going to have a double mastectomy and that would be the only way of ensuring I'd never get cancer back, so I booked an appointment with my breast surgeon...

he obviously thought I was being ridiculous! He explained to me that due to me catching the tumor early, together with my age and the treatment I was receiving... I had a 90% chance of never getting breast cancer again... I know its just a statistic but the relief was overwhelming. So I told him about my fears and how I'm breaking down regularly and he suggested councelling... so I'm going to give it a few weeks to see how I go and then go and see him again.. maybe opening up is what I need although I've always found it so hard to be honest about feeling down.

I think this is why I'm like this now; I've spent months pretending I'm fine so that everyone around me didn't worry. But what I was actually doing was hiding my true feelings and it's been bottling up inside and now, it's exploded and I just can't cope.