Once your treatment begins, your feelings and emotions can become very bound up with what you are physically experiencing. Each new intervention may make you anxious and fearful. Even though nurses and doctors try to prepare you carefully for tests and treatment, nobody can ever quite say how you will react to something. And so you can feel angry and let down when chemotherapy, for example, makes you feel sick or very tired.
what has happened to me?
How you will feel during treatment varies, but for some, the intensity of some treatments may make you feel as if you have no life outside of the hospital at all. You may feel so poorly in between treatments that you do not feel up to seeing friends and extended family. It can seem at times that cancer and its treatment has taken over your whole life.
anger/hatred
Sometimes plans for treatment need to be changed or you may arrive at the hospital to find that you cannot receive your chemotherapy after all. You may well feel that you have no control over your situation and you may be furious. Even when there is nobody to blame you can feel hatred towards the hospital or the doctors.
despondent
The treatment can make you feel awful, as we know, but some of the side effects can also make you very sad and despondent. The loss of your hair can be very hard to bear, until you become more used to it and perhaps meet other teenagers who have experienced the same thing. If you are on a ward with other young people, you may accept your hair loss more easily.
how I feel about myself
There may be a general lowering of your self-esteem, and you may have a poor body image, for example, you may have concerns about your fertility and feel less masculine or feminine, or simply less attractive.
Some cancers require surgery that can cause a change in your body shape or there may be quite a severe change in how you look (disfigurement). It is natural that you would feel very distressed by this and it is important that you have the opportunity to discuss your feelings and reactions with a trained counsellor, psychologist or psychotherapist. (If they aren't available on the ward the nurses or doctors caring for you will be able to tell you how you can get help.)
