It was a couple of months after McClean had stopped breastfeeding her then one-year-old daughter Zoe, she noticed a mass in her right breast. Although slightly uneasy, she presumed it was just a blocked duct. Her GP did not think it was anything to worry about either, but referred her for further investigation. It came as a big shock when she was told, on the same day as an ultrasound and biopsy had been performed, that it was cancer.
Understanding and managing the often-unspoken fear of cancer recurrence was the theme for a webinar, Living with Uncertainty, run by Cancer Care West in November. Most survivors will entertain the darkest of thoughts at certain points, says Donohoe, who works in the organisation’s Letterkenny centre. “They will be kept up at night wondering is this thing going to come back?”“They feel they should be grateful that they have survived when others haven’t and they shouldn’t be feeling like this.
“When we are anxious our thoughts become facts,” says Brennan. It is helpful to realise our thoughts can become inaccurate when we are anxious. For cancer survivors, there is also fear of the fear. “Everyone is told stress can cause cancer,” she says. “If we’re not managing our anxiety well, we can worry about the harm we are causing ourselves. So, it becomes that vicious cycle.”
“The joint pain got much worse, to the point that I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming as if somebody was trying to rip the bones out of my leg.” Doctors tried various drugs but, after two years, took her off everything “because I had no quality of life”, says Dillon, a survivor volunteer with the Irish Cancer Society .
An environmental scientist, he tracks his PSA results. In March this year, his PSA was .22, compared with a reading of 6.5 just before his biopsy and diagnosis in 2016. However, at his last appointment with a consultant in January, Patel was surprised to hear him say they needed to keep an eye on him for 10 years.