End of Treatment, not End of Healing

On my last day of radiotherapy, I practically skipped into the treatment area. I had a gift and card thanking the lovely radiotherapists…

On my last day of radiotherapy, I practically skipped into the treatment area. I had a gift and card thanking the lovely radiotherapists and receptionists whom I never hoped to see again — at least not in the Princess Alexandra suite. I was giddy with glee during the zapping bit. Then they handed me the take-home papers, the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Feel All Better.” In addition to moisturizing tips and phone numbers to call, they warned me: You are going to feel worse before you feel better. I took the papers, smiled at the radiotherapists, and danced to my car thinking, Do they not see how happy I am?! Why, I’m so full of vim and vigor right now, so full of delight to be done, that a little thing like radiation can’t bring me down!

They were, of course, correct. The effects of radiation are cumulative, meaning that your tissue continues to absorb the effects for days after treatment has finished. All my vim and delight didn’t prevent me from hitting a huge wall of fatigue, the kind of feeling where you aren’t sleepy or even tired exactly. You just can’t do … much of anything. On a good day, I might venture out to the grocery store, get halfway through the shop and then hit the wall. I felt like I was sleepwalking while transferring foodstuffs from cart to belt and attempting to stay focused on small talk with the checkout staff. I would drive home and then sit in the car for 10 or 15 minutes, thankful that even in June it’s cold enough in Scotland that the milk probably wouldn’t go bad that quickly. I would have to unload groceries in two stages: first, car to kitchen, then take a break of lying down on the couch. Then put away groceries and take another break of lying down on the couch.

In addition to the worsening effects of radiation on my skin, I started getting infections where my sutures were supposed to have dissolved. The GP gave me antibiotics, which helped but didn’t clear them. One surgeon thought it was fine. Then an abscess developed. The GP gave me more antibiotics. Finally my other surgeon identified what the problem was and gave the order for sterile dressings, which have to be applied in Minor Injuries (kind of like Urgent Care in the U.S.). And David was traveling for several weeks of this. And my poor child had to spend his birthday in the waiting room of yet another of his mother’s doctor’s appointments. And we got the keys to our new house and I was supposed to get started on the move. And I was so tired and frustrated that this whole healing thing was not going at all according to my plan.

Oh yes, by the way, we bought a house. It was originally the doctor’s office, called a surgery, in the village, and is still referred to by many as The Old Surgery. I think this is hilarious, both as a house name and because we put in our note of interest the day of my second surgery. Officially the ground-floor flat below us is the only part of the house called The Old Surgery and our house has a different, less-amusing name. We love it, and at our current pace we expect to be unpacked in about three years. Turns out that when you are moving house while recovering from cancer treatment, you greatly appreciate that you have a strapping teenage son and friends who do Crossfit, all of whom you recruit to carry your heavy stuff up multiple flights of stairs. And thankful for the two delivery guys who were willing to take a side hustle and haul David’s monstrous beast of a steel desk upstairs.

Finally, by the middle of August, I no longer had to apply any bandages or dressings to my suture infections. My skin settled down from the effects of being blasted with radiation. My energy levels started to feel normal; I could get through an entire grocery-shopping sequence without lying down on the couch at all. I had my final review appointment with the oncologist in early September, and he made it a trifecta of doctors happy with my progress and prognosis. At this point, I’m officially released from “treatment” status and am now moved into “maintenance” status. I’ll have periodic scans, but based on the best information anyone has, no more cancer — not even the decaf variety — is expected to recur.

Treatment is over, but I’m cognizant that healing follows a different timeline. I have friends who finished treatment but then discovered that healing didn’t follow in the way they had hoped. It might be nice if treatment were a fomula in which x(procedures) + y(time) = ∞(healing). But it doesn’t work that way, and that’s OK. I’m still delighted to be finished with treatment, and I’m fine with seeing the path of healing unfold, whatever its twists and turns. And I’m grateful that for right now, I’m in the part of the journey where I can dance with happiness that cancer and its diagnosis and its treatment and its side effects don’t have to be part of my daily schedule or thoughts.