Rainbow

After the sadness of yesterday, the first thing I saw from my window this morning was a rainbow - a symbol of hope.

Does being a cancer survivor make you more susceptible to thinking about illness and death? Perhaps it does, but maybe not in the way I had expected. While I was anaemic, I thought about death on a daily basis and saw it as a welcome, though terrifying, release. As I approached surgery, I was afraid and yet accepting, though I realised then that I wanted to live.

Having recovered, my views have changed. Death no longer scares me - but illness does. The thought of prolonged illness and suffering of the sort my mother experienced at the end of her life (7 weeks may be classed "a short illness", but for the person who's ill and for those who love them, it's a lifetime) horrifies me. I don't want to survive at all costs. This, I think is why I worry every time I feel a minor twinge; is it the beginning of something more? Something worse?

Every day, I reconsider the words the nurse spoke when I first met her; "You are not someone who has cancer. You are someone who's had cancer and doesn't have it any longer."

My journey this year has been tough. But I have survived and I have learnt a huge amount.