Closure

I finished Radiotherapy this week. That is the end of my invasive, regular medical treatment. When I go for hospital appointments in the future I will have to pay for parking like most other people. I no longer have the 'special' cancer patient car pass. That is a good feeling. It has been an odd few days. A fresh wave of grief hit me and I felt pissed off and furious at having cancer. It is so indeterminate and raises so many questions - the most crucial being - has it really gone?

I saw the oncologist today and had a good cry in his office. It was very cathartic - almost a rite of passage. It has been a tough nine months and I feel that I can finally let go a little. I don't need to keep it together - in fact - I needed to let go a lot. It takes huge amounts of emotional and physical energy to go through the shock of diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I wanted to keep it together and be positive but in crying today in front of the Onc - I also knew I had to let it go. I had to grieve for the loss of many things - not just the physical. The most important being mental and emotional peace. It is exhausting being consumed with anxiety about your own mortality. Before cancer I would have moments of being conscious of it but they would flit past. With cancer it has consumed me at times to the expense of all else.

Now it's time to move past that. I'm here. As far as the oncologist can tell I'm cured. There is a moderate risk that it could come back but I am certainly not going to live my life with that as my consuming obsession. I am going to put some of that energy into living my life well and with gusto. Life is finite - for everyone - it was crappy to have that suddenly become concrete. Now it's time to get beyond that, to claim back some naivete around it. To have some peace of mind.