135. Hurray! Breast Cancer Will Improve Your Life!!

You've got breast cancer? Worry not.

Congratulations, in fact. Because here is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to Transform Your Life.

Take our word for it. You go through cancer and you emerge on the other side a Better Person, or at the very least a person with a Better Life.

Healthier - because of that diet you've discovered, full of liquidised greens and purples and browns, which you will stick with forever. You now feel so lovely and fit! And you are thin at last!

More loved - what with all these people who've fallen over themselves to help and support you and tell you how precious you are. (In the spirit of Queen Victoria who survived several assassination attempts and observed, "It is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved.")

More worthwhile - because now you no longer fritter your life away watching cats on Facebook. No sir! You have started support groups and raised bucket loads of money for good causes. Not a day of your life is wasted anymore.

With less baggage - because cancer has focused the mind so within months of diagnosis, you ditched your husband. And your job. Oh, and you've started a university degree. You see, cancer has also made you:

More fulfilled.

Plus, you've learned how you can Help Your Children Through Difficult Times. You've started sewing Cancer Owls! Spread the word!

This is the kind of thing you read in magazines.

In this particular case, the October issue of a woman's magazine. It doesn't matter which one. I'm only blogging about this now that the issue of WomMag is safely off the supermarket shelves, so there is no risk of you rushing off to buy a copy. (Fortunately, none of my friends and acquaintances seem to have read it, as nobody commented "I saw you in Wommag," whilst loads of people told me "I read your letter in the Guardian" last year.)

A Wommag journalist interviewed me alongside seven other breast cancer survivors. As part of a special feature, my cancer year was summarised in 150 words and put out there alongside my photograph:

'Find your own way to help kids understand.' Irene Tuffrey, 52, London.

Why did I agree? Because, rightly or wrongly, I fancied that it might help some people to read about Owl. I knew 150 words is nothing (you've read almost 400 words so far) so I urged the journalist to include a link to this blog, for those who'd like to find out more. It won't suit all (read: most) families but it might help just one or two, I reckoned.

"Of course," she agreed. "I will."

But the web address wasn't there, just the paltry 150 words, so what's the point? Worse: it included several misquotes, including "quotes" of what my children allegedly said. (It starts badly enough in the headline: I don't use the word "kids").

Note to self: never agree to this sort of thing again, unless I write it myself or have editorial control.

I haven't dreamt up the messages about cancer making you more loved / healthy / fulfilled / worthwhile.

It's all there in the pen portraits of the seven other women. (Although there's no guarantee, we now know, that they really said what's written.)

In fact the one about healthy eating is printed in extra-large font with full details of the life-transforming diet book. I'm not surprised, as the interviewer was clearly taken by this. She told me all about it on the phone, hinting that I might like to try the diet too. I thanked her politely, saying I'm glad it helped Ms 'Make it the start of a healthier you' (that's the headline she got) but personally I didn't feel the need for a new diet.

(Between you and me, I'm just glad I can enjoy the old one.)

"I just need to find one more woman to interview," the journalist said.

"For some reason, I've only got younger women. I need to find someone over the age of 60. Do you know of anyone who'd be happy to share her story?"

As it happened, I did. I rang Choir Friend, who is in her early 60s.

"Well, yes, I don't mind," said Choir Friend. "But I don't really have a story. I mean, I had breast cancer, it was treated, it's over, I'm fine, and I just carry on with my life. It hasn't really affected me that much and I hardly think about it anymore."

Now that, I told her, is exactly the kind of story that should go into Wommag. I mean, how utterly reassuring would that be to other women?

Look everyone, it's possible to have cancer without it transforming your life.

No story to tell? Why on earth is THAT not a story? From where I'm sitting, it sounds like the best story of all.

So I emailed the journalist and told her as much.

"My friend," I wrote in my email, "had a lumpectomy and radiotherapy this winter. She says that she has nothing interesting to say because she doesn't think her life has changed at all, she just dealt with it and got on with it. Personally, I think that's actually a really important perspective: that cancer doesn't have to be a highly interesting and life changing event, but simply one of the many things that can happen to you!"

The journalist replied:

"I've just found someone to be my 60-something, thankfully but thanks so much for your help, I'm interested to find out why it's been so hard to find women in the older age group when there are so many of them going through diagnosis..."

Perhaps they are just more like Choir Friend, dealing with cancer in whatever way they can without feeling the need to have a New Life afterwards? Or perhaps they do have a New Life, but it's less glamorous, more full of aches and pains and exhaustion, and therefore of less interest to glossy magazines?

The 60-something in Wommag said (wait for it)...

"Having breast cancer transformed my life - for the better... within months of my diagnosis I'd left my husband, started an Open University degree and changed jobs... I've raised £120,000..."

You can see why Wommag liked her story better than Choir Friend's. They want Positive. Dramatic. Transformative.

Something to look forward to then, and no pressure, if you're a newly diagnosed breast cancer patient picking up Wommag in the consultant's waiting room.

But I wonder, now, who this is really written for. I imagine all these women reading this, the women who have survived breast cancer and feel that their lives are not better, but more difficult now. Why don't we read anything about them? It makes me even more regretful that my story featured in Wommag.

I want to say to those women: Sorry if this makes you feel inadequate, as if you've failed in some way, having done nothing special to cope with your illness. 

I feel uncomfortable nowadays, when I hear people say things like Hasn't she coped well with all this.

I have coped in the only way I can. So will you, when cancer hits you. It will be your way, no better and no worse than mine, just different.

I'd like to propose another magazine feature.

It goes like this.

Breast cancer?*
It's rotten.
It robbed me of my energy / faculties / sanity / bodily functions.

*Could easily be substituted for: Bereavement / Rheumatoid arthritis / Depression

Here are some pen portraits of breast cancer survivors.

• Breast cancer hasn't changed my life. (Yes, well spotted, that's Choir Friend in the photograph.)
• I had breast cancer last year and I'm still tired / achy / worried. But I mustn't complain because aren't I lucky? (Could this be Yours Truly? No comment.)
• I never got used to my flat chest / reconstruction / new hair.
• I haven't taken up fundraising / a new degree / a new job / a new husband. No... Instead, I've had to give up my volunteering job / sex life / hobbies.

The title of this fascinating feature would be:

WARNING: a sprinkling of breast cancer may not improve the flavour of life.

Editors, if you're reading this: I will provide my journalistic services for free. Plenty of material to choose from. Please form an orderly queue.

129. The weeks/months/years of recovery

So, we did the Moonwalk. All 26 miles of it. Pretty good, if I may say so myself. The fundraising wasn't bad either: we astonished ourselves by raising over £5,500 for breast cancer research and charities.

How are things a fortnight later?

Was I a total wreck in the week following those 26 miles? And have I now recovered fully, not so much from the marathon but from my cancer year? That was the plan, after all. I once wrote that in my view, my cancer story didn't end with the final shot of treatment (January) but with the Moonwalk in May. 

The answer is no, and no.

Not a total wreck, happily and surprisingly. I slept a lot during the aftermath. (I'm talking 12 hour nights. Haven't done that since, oh, toddlerhood probably.) But wow, I felt strong. On top of the world. Two days after the walk, I was back at my desk with a clear mind and a body that felt fitter than healthier than it had done for a year.

Clearly, I thought, this is the answer for recovering cancer patients. Marathon walks: a miracle cure. They should come on prescription.

But whilst I am evidently much, much better now than I have been for a very long time, things are by no means back to normal.

Or perhaps they are? Perhaps this is my new normal. It's called Older Age. That's what it feels like, anyway. Well past middle age. Youth a distant memory.

That day, when I cycled to my GP with my dodgy lump, I was sliding pleasantly from youthfulness into fit and active middle age. Then I lost a year. And now I've woken up and I find myself in a new groove, one where I need afternoon rests and where getting up from the floor is an event that needs careful orchestrating.

I mean, when thirty-somethings offer you their hand when you get off a train and you look at them and think, Blimey, I could be your mother, you cannot escape the fact that you've moved up a generation. These shifts used to happen gradually, but now they've happened overnight. Well, perhaps not overnight, but overyear.

I'm not complaining. I wake up happy, every single day. Hurray! A new day, and I can DO THINGS! I can work. Garden. Sing. Cook. Walk a marathon. Yesterday, I finally started cello lessons again. How wonderful is that?

But I have to be very careful not to let frustration get the better of me sometimes. A few fully active days in a row: no problem. But they are inevitably followed by a few days of lethargy.

It's all to do with expectation. I can enjoy planned rests, but you may catch me moaning if I had plans to keep going all day and I can't.

I thought I'd be back to my old self after the marathon, but she is still a distant memory. Perhaps she won't be back?

What I don't know is whether the current state of affairs is due to...

(a) after-effects of the cancer treatments, or

(b) side-effects of the daily pills that suppress my oestrogen production (the leaflet says that both fatigue and bone pains are common), or

(c) old age. See above.

If it's (c), the ongoing fatigue will last for the rest of my life. Downhill from here, even. Chin up and get used to it.

If it's (b), I've got another decade of this. Ten years of hormone treatment, they said. Unless I decide that the side effects are not worth the slightly lower risk of the cancer coming back. Hm. Percentages and chances and perceptions of cost versus benefit. Tricky one.

But could it be (a)? One sprightly and hardworking colleague, who went through chemotherapy some years ago (and who, like me, worked on and off throughout), confided that four months after her treatment ended, she thought Perhaps I just can't ever work again. It took six months, she said, before she looked up in surprise because she suddenly wasn't tired. Ah! she thought. Yes, NOW I remember! This is what it was like, not being tired!

Someone else said it wasn't until five years after breast cancer treatment that she felt her old self again. And a doctor I met when I gave a lecture at a hospice recently told me that the fatigue from radiotherapy lasts a year.

Only time will tell. And time, I am beginning to realise, mustn't be measured in weeks. Perhaps not even in months, as I have been doing. ("In a few months' time, everything will be different.")

I have to be patient and start thinking in terms of years. In the meantime, let me remember this again and again...

Note to self:
Be happy and enjoy what you have, rather than be sad and frustrated about what you don't have.

118. A week off from everything

It was most welcome, this week in Majorca with my husband and one of our daughters.

Not as sunny and warm as we'd hoped, perhaps, but certainly as restful as I could have wished for.

Nothing to do, nothing to worry about except which book to read next, which food to choose from the sumptuous buffets, whether to swim in the pool or walk to the beach.

We've never done this before. It's not my kind of holiday, being catered for in a place with pools and beaches and sunshine. OK for a couple of days perhaps, but then I'd start twitching and wondering where the action is. Walks! Bike rides!

But now, it was just what I needed. Tiredness still overwhelms me. Yes, we did the walk and the bike ride (leaving daughter behind, mind: this kind of holiday was her choice and walks/bikes didn't feature on her wish list) but only for a few hours at a stretch, and that was me done for. Back to the book, the glass of wine, the food all nicely cooked with someone else doing the washing up.

I am intrigued by the person emerging from this illness.

I'm not the woman I was before. Not physically, not emotionally. One day I may be able to reflect on that properly, but for now, let's just reflect on the hair. After all, that is what most people comment on when they see me.

New look...

It's growing back very thick, very grey and rather curly, although it is a bit early to tell whether the waves are here to stay.

It is now at a stage where I can pretend that it's meant to be like this, and the image-conscious daughter no longer needs to worry whether I'll whip off my hat.

I can't stop running my hands through it, because it feels so unusual and luscious after all that baldness. Small milestones: first shampoo, first drip-drip after a shower. First time I had to do something to it because it was sticking up the wrong way.

Some friends urge me to keep it like this. Trendy! Sassy! Glamorous! and words to that effect.

Perhaps. I'm not sure. It's not bad - and it's a whole lot better than no hair at all - but I'm not sure it is me.

Problem is, I don't know what me is anymore. As I said, I'm not the woman I was, but neither am I sure who I have become... which is both exciting and alarming, depending on the mood.

Relaxing in Majorca

102. Lying down in public places

I can do everything again.

I can walk longish distances, I can work, I can sing, I can cook meals whilst hanging out the washing, I can sit in airports.

I just have to remind myself that I cannot walk and work and cook and wash and sit in airports, oh, and sing, all on the same day. I've tried, and guess what? I get tired.

Now there's a surprise.

The trouble is, how do I know at what point my determination to do at least some of these things in one day turns from a laudable attempt to put last year behind me and build up new strength to pure madness?

I look back at my repeated attempts to go back to work (even for just a few days) during all those gruelling treatments last year. That, I now see, was pure madness. Only now do I understand that friends' and colleagues' repeated exhortations to "concentrate on getting well again" meant exactly what it sounded like: stop trying to be superwoman, there is absolutely no shame in taking all these months off work.

I delight in the ability to walk longish distances, work, sing, etc; but I regularly find myself coming up short.

Usually on a Friday. Each morning, I look at the day ahead in delight. A whole new day! The possibilities! Hurray! Let's start that walk/work/washing/etc in the happy knowledge that I can do this again.

I try to keep Fridays free of obligations (including self-imposed obligations) so I can do all those extra things you never manage to fit into your life. (I usually end up doing just a little bit more work, but hey, let's call that a free choice).

So I anticipate those sort-of-empty days with pleasure... only to find, several weeks in a row now, that I am simply too tired to move or think, and end up lying motionless on the sofa whilst watching mindless stuff on iPlayer.

The "extra things to do on a Friday", clearly, should include "Do Nothing".

My body has not yet recovered. It takes time.

It's three months since the final dose of chemo; a month since the last shot of radiotherapy. My head may be covered with a grey helmet of hair, the skin around my scar may be healing (it's gone from angry red to bizarre mottled grey to just-a-bit-sunburnt), but after half a busy day, I'm like a deflated balloon.

One expert-by-experience told me that she was surprised how long it took to feel truly well again after her cancer treatments. You think you are better, and of course you are much better than you were, but still, it was six months before she suddenly thought: Aha! Now I remember! THIS is what it was like to have energy!

Will I look back at these first post-treatment months and wonder why on earth I tried to do so much all at once?

The trick, I now know, is to build in short periods of physical rest - and not to get frustrated by the need to stop. I went to Switzerland this week for two solid days of work meetings, and the only way to manage eight hours of sitting around tables was to spend some of it not sitting around tables. By 2pm, just after I'd given my half-hour presentation, I found myself in a dizzy cold sweat.

"Are you OK?" said the colleague next to me when I returned to my seat.

"No," I said. "I'm going to have to lie down."

He handed me his coat for a pillow. Just as well these meetings involved friendly colleagues who didn't mind me lying down at the back of the room. It seemed they were just pleased I had made it to Switzerland at all.

"Carry on!" I said from the distant corner. "I'm listening, I just can't hold myself upright for that long."

(Now I know why I am so much better off working from home. I hadn't realised quite what a difference it makes that I can do some of it in an unprofessional, horizontal position. A full day working in the office takes recovery time; a full day working at home is absolutely fine.)

Similarly, I found a lying-down spot during a day-long choral workshop yesterday. Plus, I ignored the conductor's frequent instructions to Stand Up. It's not that I can't stand: it's just that I need to preserve my physical energy if I want to last the day.

(But oh, how lovely to join my choir again. I haven't gone back to weekly rehearsals yet - evening things are still too exhausting - but joining this one-off workshop was wonderful.)

Cancer remains an excellent excuse.

"Of course!" people say, when I apologise for lying down. "Whatever!"

Perhaps we should all simply own up and zone out when things get too much.

I've noticed other people would also benefit from the occasional lie-down, for equally valid reasons, but they don't have my ready-made and easily understood explanation.

"We should all lie down!" one colleague said wistfully, weary after all these hours of meetings in Switzerland with several more hours to go.

So here is my resolution: I shall not only keep lying down (in public places if needs be), but I shall positively enjoy it.

Who knows? It might even set a trend.

I'm in there somewhere, singing again... but let me just sit down and lie down occasionally

100. One hundred blog posts about living with breast cancer

I suppose we all like a milestone, even if it's an artificial one. Is life at 50-plus-one-day so very different from the life at 50-minus-one-day? Is your outlook on the 1st of January different from the one on 31st December? Just asking.

Is blog post number 100 any different from number 23, 67 or 89?

Yet it's a milestone for me.

Perhaps because it coincides with the first steps on Recovery Road, a road going Down the mountain rather than Up the mountain. Having reached the top at last, it's time to stop and stare perhaps, taking in the new vista.

(Vista: a pleasing view; a mental view of a succession of remembered or anticipated events.)

This one hundredth blog post feels a bit like the flag planted on my mountain top, look here folks, done it, made it, been there. I know I'm not the only one, there's a veritable FOREST of flags where I'm standing, but still, it's my very own hand-crafted, hand-carried, hand-planted flag, and I've got the scars to prove it.

But I'm not going back down the way I came. I'm going to come down on the other side of my mountain, leaving that treacherous Cancer Road out of view.

A big part of me wants to leave this blog behind as well, along with Cancer Road.

Out of view, out of mind. Onwards.

I am glad I wrote it. It has kept me sane, enabling me to step outside myself. When things were particularly bleak, I would be composing the words in my head: Ha! wait until I describe this particular little horror. Knowing, at the very same time, that there would be another blog post later on, one that said OK, that's over now. Next!

Crucially, blogging also kept me connected to the outside world. Friends and acquaintances and even strangers sending me supportive vibes through my iPad, even when I couldn't move beyond bed and sofa. There is a lot to be said for modern technology. I cannot describe in words what it was like to feel that others were thinking of me; to know that they were interested enough in my tales of woe to keep reading.

Even now that I'm done with the treatments and have gone back to work, I meet people I hardly know (distant work colleagues, say) who tell me that they've read everything, right from the start.

This has the bizarre but rather nice effect of feeling like I've got a whole new set of friends out there. Because if you've listened to me banging on about being breastless/hairless/defenseless/helpless, and you've stayed with me even during the grimmest, most tear-filled of days, then you're a friend, right? It's a bit one-sided of course, but interestingly, I have noticed that people who used to be mere acquaintances, or even strangers, seem to open up more. I suppose if I can tell them about being breastless/hairless/etc, then they can tell me about their life as well.

 

So it's been good, all this blogging. But isn't one hundred posts quite enough of a bad thing?

No, apparently not.

Now that having cancer is no longer my full-time job, people are giving me hints.

• You'll have to find something else to blog about! (As if it was the blogging that was my primary objective, rather than the specifics of coping with my verbal cancer diarrhoea.)
• Don't stop blogging! I'm going to have withdrawal symptoms!
• What are you going to DO with your blog? (This in an expectant sort of voice that leaves no room for the "nothing" response.)
• When is the book coming out?

So, here is my answer. I will carry on blogging, but ONLY about things related to being a recovering breast cancer patient.

Reflections on what it was like, looking back. It's quite amazing how things look quite different when they are behind you. I mean, who knew that going back to work in-between treatments, the stop-and-start approach, was just madness? At the time, getting a sick note for the entire ten months just seemed feeble; now, I think: Get a grip! Of course it doesn't count as skiving if you sign off from the day job for the duration of all these gruelling treatments! Actually, it seems that you all knew this, and told me so at the time, but I didn't believe it.

Snippets of memories that might be interesting or entertaining, but never made the blog. Ah, I can think of a whole stack of them.

I'm also wondering whether I ought to go back to the very first three months following the discovery of my breast lump, before I started blogging. I read back through my diaries recently and was shocked at how utterly floored I was by it all - I have genuinely forgotten all of that. Pouring that all over the internet would have felt far too scary at the time, but now that I have safely emerged at the top of the mountain, I wonder whether it's worth releasing? What do you think?

Reports of the journey down Recovery Road. Because it's not over, of course. I may think it is, I may pretend it is, but it's not. I am feeling genuinely happy and on top of the world (well, perhaps not the whole world, but on top of the mountain, definitely), but physically, I'm still struggling. This week, I worked quite solidly for four days (sooooo excited about being able to finish a task I've tried to do for the past year, but never quite managed, because of the stop-and-start problem), but on day five, when I had planned to do just a little bit more on that task, or perhaps go for a very long walk, I simply collapsed into bed. All day. And I haven't quite emerged from that spell of exhaustion.

The Take-each-day-as-it-comes lesson was one of the hardest to learn and the easiest to forget.

Comments on cancer-related news items. Have you noticed how cancer is in the news all the time these days? Is it just me, or was it always thus? (There was another one on the BBC this morning, a celebrity "coming out" as a breast cancer patient. I'm glad I'm not famous. I would be horrified if my getting-through-each-day was described on the radio as a Cancer Battle, as if an ability to "fight and win" would be my own personal virtue, and dying would, presumably, be a result of my own deficiency as a warrior. Ah, I could go on.)

One thing I am not at all sure about is your suggestions of publishing a book.

Those are flattering suggestions of course, but every author must ask herself: why? who for?

I'd be interested in your answers to those questions. I can think of some myself (didn't I start this blog partly because I thought Owl was such a marvellous addition to our family, he was worth sharing?) But for now, I am shelving the book idea - mostly because my daughters cannot think of anything much worse than a mother blogging about things that mothers should very well keep quiet about, posting pictures of bald heads and private pigs in the process. There's not much point in publishing a book if you're not going to promote it, but I haven't quite resolved the tension between wanting to share my cancer-writing as widely as possible, as part of my Let's-try-and-save-or-at-least-help-the-world affliction, and protecting my children from a future psychiatrist's couch ("My mum wrote about me! Embarrassing things! In a book! Without my permission! I'm doomed!")

Wait a year or two perhaps, when mum being too tired to read Winnie-the-Pooh is a distant memory, her hair is flowing freely, and she hasn't died.

In the meantime, I'll keep blogging. But only when I feel like it. It could be several times a week, or it could be once a month. You'll just have to wait and see, and so will I.

That leaves me with the final task on blog post 100, which is to add a photograph.

"One day, we will look back, Owl and I, and marvel at the road we have travelled."

That's what I wrote on the About Owl page when I started the blog. I guess that day has come. So off I go in search of a photographer, to immortalise us both, Owl and I, looking back.

I find youngest daughter. She agrees on the condition that Bear can be photographed for the blog too, wearing the brand-new waistcoat I made for him this weekend. (See, I'm on the way down that mountain. Sewing waistcoats for bears. Must be feeling better.)

Doesn't he mind being on the blog then? Unlike Pig?

No, he doesn't. One day, asserts the younger daughter, he is going to be famous anyway, so he might as well start getting used to the paparazzi.

I wonder... could I seize this moment? This particular child is most mortified if people talk to mum about the blog or the cancer... but let's see.

"How about a making the blog into a book?"

No. Just NO. For the record: if there is ever going to be a book, the younger daughter is NOT (repeat: NOT) going to contribute to the production of the front cover. We're sticking with mug shots for the blog. Here they are.

Owl and I, looking back on a cancer-filled year

The almost-famous Bear in his new waistcoat

97. My chances of survival

I have a 90% chance of being alive in ten years' time.

Is that good? I think it's excellent. But statistics are funny things, aren't they. As my wonderful GP agreed when we had another good long chat this week, you tell one patient that his chances are 70% and they go Oh how fantastic. You tell another patient with the same diagnosis exactly the same, and they break down in distress, Oh how terrible.

So I wasn't surprised when my husband and I sat in the cancer consultant's office for the very last time this week, and she responded to my "What are my chances" question with a "Do you really want to know?"

But she wasn't surprised that this particular patient said Yes I do. She had already turned to her computer screen to show me the systems they use to work out the answer to this kind of question. Clearly, she had pigeonholed me (accurately, I feel) as an intelligent, articulate patient who is able to negotiate the healthcare system. She said so herself.

This was in response to another question, about follow-up appointments.

There aren't any.

There used to be. Breast cancer patients used to be invited to return to the doctor's office every six months to begin with, then once a year. But the cancer team found that this could lead to patients not reporting in with worrying symptoms (new bone pains, say), because they would think, Well, I've seen the doctor two months ago and she said everything is fine, so I'll wait until I see her again in four months' time. Plus, apparently most new problems are not picked up at the routine appointments, but discovered by the patients themselves in-between appointments. Oh, and another thing: patients tend to get rather anxious about the follow-up checks.

So now they've started a new system called Open Access Follow-Up, where they don't call you in, but you contact them with any worrying symptoms.

The problem with this, said the consultant, is that some patients are easily put off if they are not immediately successful in getting an appointment. Others who are perhaps less clued in than I am might simply not turn up with their new aches or pains.

Interestingly, she added that patients tend to use the OAFU (yes, honestly, they use that acronym) in the months following the end of treatment, and then tail off. Perhaps they simply need to get over the shock of not being a full-time patient anymore, or the insecurity that comes with not having doctors and nurses peering at your blood results and prodding your surviving breast on a regular basis.

According to the OAFU leaflet (see, we're all learning to speak the jargon here), the breast care nurse will teach me what kind of symptoms warrant an immediate return visit to the clinic. I haven't heard from her yet, so we'll wait and see... she's been off sick with stress from too much work, so perhaps it's just as well that I already know what to look out for.

New nodules in my scar or neck or other breast, of course. But also signs that the cancer might have spread (for me as a breast cancer patient, that is most likely to be my bones, lungs, liver or brain): any persistent bone pains, shortness of breath, tiredness, weight loss or headaches, and I'll be on that phone. And if they don't give me an immediate appointment, I'll just nip down to the clinic from my office, preferably wearing my Staff Badge, and make a fuss.

What they did offer me are annual mammograms, but I'm trying to argue my way out of that one.

No point, as far as I can see. My particular cancer was not visible on a mammogram, not even on that day when I went along to have my lump checked. The consultant touched my breast with one finger and went Oh yes, there it is, I can feel it and sent me along to the mammogram room followed by the ultrasound room.

"I've looked at your mammogram and it looks absolutely fine!" smiled the ultrasound woman. She soon stopped smiling, because within seconds, there it was on the screen, an unsightly ragged-edged mass that clearly wasn't the cyst we were all expecting.

I had never heard of breast cancers that are invisible on a mammogram, but now I know there's even a word for it. Mammographically occult.

Definition of "Occult": having mystical, supernatural or magical powers, which I prefer to the medical definition: not accompanied by readily discernible signs or symptoms.

That's my cancer: one with magical powers, in possession of an invisibility cloak.

I've added mammographically occult to my vocabulary, which always catches doctors by surprise. Keen as I am to understand everything, I made Ultrasound Woman explain to me how it is possible to have an Occult Breast Cancer, and I now see how it happens (bit too convoluted to explain here, but it's to do with having very dense breast tissue. Too much information, perhaps?)

Consultants have been mumbling promises of an annual MRI scan instead.

Ah, the MRI scan. I've seen the pictures taken shortly after my diagnosis, when they wanted to check whether the cancer was limited to the lump or whether it had gone all dotty in the rest of the breast. No hiding under a magic invisibility cloak here: my lump lit up on the screen like a beacon.

Alas, although my consultant was happy to endorse my argument, it wasn't up to her to decide whether I qualify for such five star follow-up: it's the surgeons and the radiographers, apparently, who discuss this in their team meetings, and they are not always keen on it. (Why not? Too expensive? Not enough evidence that it's necessary? I didn't ask.)

So I've fixed an appointment with the surgeon in two months' time. (Not my own lovely surgeon, unfortunately, who has now left.) If she says No, I definitely will ask why not, and I will only be satisfied with fully argued and convincing medical explanations.

Apart from the annual mammogram or MRI scan, I have started a 10 year course of hormone treatment.

My cancer was spurred into growth by oestrogen, so I'm taking pills to stop that happening. Five years' worth of a drug called Letrozole, probably followed by five years' worth of Tamoxifen (although the consultant pointed out that the treatment plan may well have changed by then, what with new research coming out all the time).

I also need to take a daily bone strengthening tablet, to combat Letrozole's side effects. Despite my gloriously young bones. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

My GP wrote "until 2020" on my repeat prescription. Blimey.

So, back to the statistics. "What are my chances of the cancer coming back?" I wanted to know.

And yes, I did want to know. I stressed the point by saying that I understand about statistics and their limitations. So many ifs and buts. In the end, they are just numbers - and, as my surgeon once helpfully pointed out: "It could just be your number."

The consultant spent some time explaining how the online "what's her chances" system works, what research it's based on, what the caveats are. The doctors use it to work out, for example, whether a course of chemotherapy is worth the bother. I won't bore you with it all, but if you're interested, I'm happy to talk it through over coffee, as I do find it all utterly fascinating.

So, here are the numbers. These are percentages of women still alive 10 years after the diagnosis. They don't look at recurrence rates (in how many women does the cancer come back?) for reasons that I'll also explain to you, if you like, over that coffee.

Looking at a lot of studies combined, of all women with my type of cancer (sized just under 2cm, spread to three lymph nodes) who had been treated with surgery but nothing else, roughly 80% were still alive 10 years later. About 17% had died of cancer, and 2% had died of something else. (Leaving, it seems to me, a mysterious 1% who are not alive, but they haven't died either. Told you. Tricky things, statistics.)

But of the women who had been treated with surgery and chemotherapy, 90% were still alive after 10 years.

So that'll be me.

My husband was surprised that the chemotherapy had added so little.

"All that effort! You'd think that it would have doubled your chances, at least."

That's another bit of evidence that everyone interprets statistics differently. (Which is why some people keep buying lottery tickets, but I would never bother. Unless it's a school raffle, where I once won first prize, an iPad mini, with a 50p ticket. What are the chances of that? Much, much lower than my chances of getting another bout of cancer in the next few years.)

From where I am sitting, it seems that the chemotherapy has doubled my chances. Instead of on in five women succumbing, it's now one in ten.

Which is not much worse than your chances, I may add. Because one in every eight women will get breast cancer at some point. (Perhaps my chances are even better than yours, because of the Letrozole and the annual scans?).

One in three people will get cancer. One in four people will die of it.

I know these statistics. I reel them off, sometimes, when giving talks. Cancer affects all of us. So being told that I have a one in ten chance of dying in the next decade doesn't worry me too much. As far as I can see, I've always had a one in ten chance of dying. (And the chance goes up, I suppose, as we get older. What were the chances of my elderly mother surviving for another ten years? There, see what I mean? The statistics probably include women in their 80s, but I think my chances are better than theirs.)

So unlike Ms C, who had a similar cancer to mine but didn't want to go back to her normal life because she was so terrified that the cancer would be back, I don't feel terrified at all. Yes, I know that it can come back. But if it does, then it's just bad luck, isn't it. I've done everything I can to prevent it happening. The surgery, the chemotherapy, the radiotherapy, the hormones. Now it's just a case of living life again, knowing that things can, and do, go wrong sometimes.

I suppose the difference with my pre-cancer life is that now, I really know that things can go wrong.

I knew it before, but only in my head. Now, I know it in my body and in my soul.

It's a useful thing to know, of course, but you can't let it ruin your life. Life is, after all, a terminal condition for all of us - but none the less enjoyable for it.

96. Wine on a Sunday afternoon

All the cancer leaflets tell me that after treatment, I am likely to remain tired for a long time (we're talking months and months); feel depressed; and generally not be able to pick up my life where I left off.

That may be so, but for the moment, I am feeling rather optimistic. Yes, I am still tired, but I hope that I can just accommodate that in my life, which I actually intend to pick up more or less exactly where I left off.

Not just that: I am also hoping to catch up with some things I have not been able to do in the past year. See friends and family, go on holiday, that kind of thing. It's rather wonderful to be able to book some time away without any caveats. None of that Well, just try, and if I can't do it, I'll cancel it.

No more need for the Cancer Card.

I don't expect to be done and dusted with the misery, but then who ever is? That's part of life, isn't it. That will just be an ordinary share of misery, rather than the one-thing-after-another misery of the past year.

To celebrate that, those of us who weren't too busy with homework (husband, younger daughter, myself) went out for a lovely lunch. And yes, we all agreed that it was worth celebrating.

Perhaps miserable wasn't the word everyone would choose, but the past year, younger daughter thought, had certainly been annoying.

Why?

"Because sometimes I wanted you to read a book to me, and you couldn't because you were too tired."

I couldn't agree more: 2014 was extremely annoying indeed. See: large font and everything. Bold. Italics.

Tonight, I have decided, is a good time to read Bear and daughter a bit of Winnie the Pooh. You're never too old for Winnie the Pooh. The very good news is that I can understand Winnie the Pooh again.

That, you have to agree, is progress.

95. Champagne on a Friday afternoon

Let us raise a glass, Owl and I. Cheers. That is the last radiotherapy session over and done with.

The final installment of nine months worth of cancer treatments, starting with a lumpectomy on the 1st of May last year, followed by a mastectomy, four months of chemotherapy and now these past weeks of radiotherapy. There are, of course, still many years of hormone treatment ahead of me. Years of follow-up appointments, scans and who-knows-what-else. (In fact my next hospital appointment, to take my blood and discuss all this with the doctor, is on Monday.)

But that doesn't really count, that is merely the New Normal, the Normal where I have become - and will forever remain - a cancer patient in the NHS.

I felt remarkably well last weekend.

Two weeks of treatment in the bag, and there I was in the swimming pool on a Saturday morning... ("They told me I'm not allowed to swim," said my Choir Friend who is also having radiotherapy at the moment. Yes, they told me that too. I've considered the advice and decided to ignore it on the basis that the I-feel-much-better effect of a swim outweighed the risk of chlorine-induced skin irritation. Anyway, I can't feel the skin around the radiotherapy site.) ...so there I was, and before I knew it, it was half an hour and 50 lengths later. Only a week earlier, I had floated sedately along in an effort to keep my limbs vaguely flexible. Now, I was positively cleaving through the water. For the first time in living memory, I felt strong. (I'm not exaggerating. I had genuinely forgotten how that felt.)

The next day, I stood in front of the microphone in church and sang lustily without becoming dizzy or sweaty of even vaguely out of breath.

I came home on top of the world.

"I feel BETTER!" I beamed, several times, to make absolutely sure that my husband and children got the message. Because I did feel better. Properly better. All the more sweet for being so unexpected, because I was still in the middle of my radiotherapy treatment.

"What shall we do to celebrate the end of nine months of misery?" I asked them.

To which one of my children remarked, "Now mum, don't exaggerate. It wasn't really nine months of misery."

I suppose I should see this as good news. The fact that my children don't seem to be too traumatised by the whole affair. I suppose they haven't seen the tears on my pillow, and I'm glad they didn't.

It even made me stop and think. Am I exaggerating? Perhaps it hadn't been too  bad, after all? Because look at me, here I am, still smiling (no, beaming, as noted above), with not much to show for my efforts except a bald head. And even that won't last.

But still, I was entitled to a bit of a celebration, I thought. So I booked a very English afternoon tea (with champagne) at a posh hotel near the Royal Marsden Hospital, to be enjoyed immediately after my final zap. I found a good friend who could take time out of work to celebrate with me.

It's been a funny sort of week, an up-and-down one, but with the up and the down happening at the very same time. Two sides of the same coin.

On Monday, I marched cheerfully along to the hospital, chatted cheerfully to my fellow patients, cheerio'd the radiotherapists cheerfully, walked cheerfully back home, then fell into bed and cried and cried. Perhaps "wailed" is a better description.

My happiness, borne of that wonderful feeling of getting better, only exists because of all the misery. (Yes, misery. I'm going to insist on it. It was bloody miserable.) It means that I can't be this happy without acknowledging the misery at the same time. I can't smile without tears.

And it isn't all over. Having fancied myself fully recovered last weekend, I then had to acknowledge that actually, these daily round trips were getting a bit too exhausting, my daily recovery time a bit longer, so I had to give up on work. Trying hard not to feel too guilty about it, not too much of a wimp. I'm sleeping well beyond the morning alarm clock.

So, today's final zap then.

For some reason, it was a couple of hours later than the usual 11.30am slot, so Mr A and Mr B and Ms C and Ms D weren't there, but there were several other patients I vaguely recognised. I joined in cheerfully with the standard how-far-do-you-have-to-come and how-many-more talk.

"My last one today!" I said, cheerfully.

Cheerfulness all round. In the waiting room, in the zapping room, walking out of the waiting room: I couldn't stop smiling. Then I went to the toilet, and just like that, the coin was flipped and I cried.

Afternoon tea to celebrate the end of cancer treatment

I'm glad I booked that afternoon tea-and-champagne. It was wonderful to sit and talk with a friend who doesn't mind the odd bit of tearfulness, and can laugh heartily when needed.

A couple of hours later, I crossed Albert Bridge for the last time. Well, not the last time I'm sure, but next time I'll leave Owl at home. I'm quite done with it all.

Leaving the Royal Marsden behind for the last time

So, once again: let us raise our glass of champagne on a Friday afternoon. Cheers everyone!