Cancer: Five years on and counting

Photo by Kevin Foley

As I write this, I am looking forward to my last outpatient appointment related to the medical care of my cancer.
This journey started in 2020, and next week, September 8th 2025, I will say goodbye to the consultant who oversaw my chemotherapy.

It begs the question: Is it really over this time?

I have asked myself that numerous times before when related milestones were being met. Why? Because I continuously want to believe I can finally close this chapter of my life and go back to what it was before.
What a load of B S, delusional, rubbish.
There is no going back to a life pre-cancer. I had cancer. I will always have had cancer. I will have to live with the psychological, social and physical consequences of that for the rest of my life.
However, as I ground myself in that reality, I also need to be thankful that I did not die. I could have died. I did not die. I have known people who have died from cancer. Thank God I did not die.

Also, as real as the reminders of my chemo are, I can, for the most part, now live a very full life. I can now have weeks of being physically ok, even a month or two. My slumps into “I need to sleep” land are getting fewer and shorter. And I should be honest, I’m not as young as I used to be, so I can’t blame everything on chemotherapy.

This blog, yes, will give you a catch-up on what my five years post-chemotherapy have been like. In doing that, I will also try to delve into the folly of wanting to believe that recovery from cancer means getting your life back.
I don’t want to be negative on myself, as I can understand why I wanted to believe that, but it was a belief that caused me a lot of disappointment, sadness, and frustration.
While this blog acknowledges the pain of the last five years, it also acknowledges the hope for the future because of prevailing through my past.

“My cancer is gone, I can go back to work now”

Four months after my hospital discharge, all I wanted was to return to work. I started applying for counselling jobs and was delighted when I secured a position with Pieta House. I was back. Or at least I felt I was. But there was a warning I ignored. I did my last ever nursing agency shift around the same time. It was soft enough, but it was a very long day. By the end of that day, I was so tired I couldn’t find where I had parked my car.

It is hard to explain the drive I had to return to work after the four-month mark, which I would now say was too early. I felt physically ok most of the time, compared to when I was in hospital. I was conscious of our financial situation, and that my income protection money was long gone. I was also bored. Mostly, though, it was the force of just wanting to get my life back. Cancer was gone, and now, finally, I could kickstart my counselling career. The cabin that was built to be my workplace was not being properly used, and that was a constant reminder to me of my unfulfilled dreams.
My counselling work was really just starting before I had my diagnosis. Cancer stopped me from getting my counselling business off the ground. Now I was going to reclaim it, as my cancer was gone. That logic attached to a huge amount of emotional power pushed me to start work with Pieta six months, and a counselling masters eight months, after discharge.

Cancer/Chemotherapy Remission:
A rollercoaster of success and failure

That first year after treatment began, the season of:
Yes, I can. No, you won’t.
Yes, I will. No, you can’t.
OK, I’ll go for a nap and then I’ll be grand.

After the nap
I’m still banjaxed. I should be able to do this now.
OK, I’ll take a day off and just rest.

A few days later
I was right to take time off. I can get back into work and life again. I’m so glad that life is finally getting back to normal.

A week later
I need a nap. If I can just rest enough regularly, I’ll be fine, and I will be ok, we will be ok.

And on, and on, that cycle went for about three years.

That cycle of physical and cognitive inability has flattened in the last two years or so., but still the F word comes and kicks me in the rear end every so often. That F word is fatigue. I personally prefer knackered. It is best described as having the energy of life, the energy of thinking, removed from the core of your being. This is what six cycles for four continuous days of heavy chemo every six weeks does to you. The phrase brain fog is another common one.
I hate what chemotherapy did to me, but I know without it, I’d be dead.

How cancer continued to take my life

It is right to be aware of all that I lost. It is also right to be aware of all that I gained.
I gained patience, having to learn to be easier on myself and accept my limitations. It is human nature to focus on the negative, but perhaps learning to live with my limitations from chemotherapy’s long-term effects will help me develop better acceptance of other life struggles as time goes by.
It is also important to recognise the hardship that my wife had to go through. During my inpatient stay, she held the fort in every way. Post-discharge, this continued in many ways for months. She put up with my moaning and frustrations. This support gave me space to learn to adapt, to come to terms with my inabilities as changed abilities were developed.

So what did I lose because of cancer/chemo?

Professionally, I really struggled. A month would hardly go by without taking two or three days off from Pieta. It was hard to start a new job when, physically, I just couldn’t show up. I did get some relief from reducing and pacing out my working day.
The masters I started a year after my diagnosis was a car crash, as I eventually had to take a module off and get extensions on assignments, etc. I did leave that course for other reasons at a later point.
The reality of starting a private practice in counselling is a struggle for anyone. Throwing my circumstances on top of that made it a true grind.

Socially, fatigue has stolen a lot of opportunities from me. My main social outlet would be with church. The church I was going to before and for four years after my treatment was in Dublin city centre. This put a lot of physical demands on me as we had to park over a kilometre from the church. Getting to know people there, especially those for whom English was not their first language, was extremely draining.
I have often found myself just crashing on the couch on a Sunday morning. Going to midweek church meetings is also arduous because they are nearly all in the evening. I would normally be looking forward to going to bed at that time. Sometimes I may go, but halfway through, I just feel better staying quiet because my brain is going mushy.
A very important support for me has been a Christian-based, cancer care, online support group I was part of. I truly felt they walked with me in my story. I still consider those of that group, who are still alive, to be close friends.

Personally, the toll is significant. My mother passed away two years ago. I am sure that I could have been more present with her and my family physically and emotionally during that time, if my health had allowed.
Life with my two teenage sons was less active than I would have liked. Instead of going for hikes, we would stay in on Sunday afternoons. Occasionally playing board games. Board games have become a regular event for us now. I am very conscious of how my sons have grown up with me being weak. I would have liked to have been more active in my life with them, but I trust that they will not look back on these years as a season of loss because of my weakness, but of adaptation and acceptance. In that way, I pray I have been a good role model to them.
Similarly, with my wife, I am aware of my physical and cognitive bouts of fatigue. That has put pressure on her to run our home and earn a regular income.

Physically, I feel, pacing myself has been like playing a game. If I wanted to have a night out on a Sunday, I would do little physical activity all weekend and even try to keep my Monday morning free. All that planning for one event is annoying. It means that I have to give up other things just for the sake of one night out.
A simple fact about Chemotherapy is that it is a long process and that by the time it’s over, you are older. I was 48 when I was diagnosed, and I was in my early 50s by the time I felt I could live normalish. So I lost three years, you could say. Add to that the debilitating effect of chemo on your body, and you have five to six years. In real money, that means I lost three years and now feel about three years older than I actually am. This means I have a poor sense of what my capabilities and general health should be. There is no doubt that I have had other physical health issues since chemo. Whether they would have happened in the same way anyway, I do not know.

A final word on my cancer/chemotherapy story, for now

I have never been one to Google about my cancer. Regardless, I am still aware that my chances of having cancer again are higher than the average person of my age. This is a reality that all people in remission from cancer live with.

While this blog may paint a hard life, remember that all I have described has been over a five-year period. In general, I have had weeks, sometimes months, of feeling fine. I am physically active with the garden and occasional hikes. Self-employed work continues to progress, and I am maintaining good relationships with friends and family, even if they are not as developed as I would like. So I’m OK. I have a supportive family and church who I know carry me along in practical and prayerful ways as needed.

A struggle for me with my cancer story will always be how I should remember it. The blog I wrote on the first anniversary covered how awkward it is to commemorate an unpleasant memory. Read it here: 1st Anniversary Blog . I genuinely believe I should never forget that part of my life and want to push it away. I treasure remembering how I felt I was going to die when I first experienced real constipation, or how I nearly toppled over my bags of chemo from the top of my dripstand when I went for a walk in the ward corridor. The nurses bannished me back to my room.
Even though the theme of this blog seems to be “Oh woe is me, (or was me)”, the exit after five years of medical oversight is a reason to celebrate. To celebrate life as it is and the hopes I have for my life, marriage, children, extended family and church.

But still, I will always remember the terror that I felt, the excruciating pain, the fear of not knowing what was happening to me, with continuous infections and blood trouble. That man deserves my remembering. I am the only one who can keep his story alive. I am the only one who knows what he went through.

I am alive today because that man PREVAILED.

And now over to you

I don’t know why you read this blog. If it is because you have or are personally going through a similar story, or perhaps it is your loved one, please do feel free to contact me either for professional support or for just a chat. I don’t have all the answers, and I certainly can’t treat cancer, but I am happy to listen to your story.