emotions and different after treatment

omg, TOTALLY. i've been told that through my treatment, i didn't complain much and tried to make it as easy as possible for my family. were you the same?
according to my oncolg. that is why i get panic attacks now, and that the whole experience of cancer is catching up with me.

i guess what i'm trying to say is, make as much fuss as possible! ;) i'm only kidding, basically just try to express yourself as much as you can, don't leave anything bottled up and dont be afraid to think about what you've been through : )

hope i've helped, all the best,
zohrah x

Hey Chloe

I finished treatment in January this year and I remember feeling exactly the same way. I remember when I went back to school getting confused as to why people weren't talking about it. You've just got to remember that for most people it's an awkward subject, and they don't know if something they say will upset you or not.
I think the way to get round it is talk to the people who you know will chat to you about it - like close friends. Don't overload them with stuff but when you see a window in the conversation use it, they wont mind chatting to you about it if they can see it's bothering you.
The feeling of confusion and stuff does start to go away with time though. It seems like it wont but after a while you will feel like a weight is lifted and that's simply when you adapt to not talking about it 24/7. It is so hard though because you've lived for months of your life on chemo and so obviously all you think about is cancer. Once you start emmersing yourself in normal life though you'll think about it less and less.
When you're with people you feel comfortable around do talk to them about it though as it does serve as good closure. And don't beat yourself up about it - you've been through a hell of a lot so all the feelings aren't going to go away over night.
Hope you feel better about things soon

Dottie xxxx

hey there! must say, you have a gift with words! puts my little paragraph to shame lol. i'd just like to say that what you said is all very true! it helped me too :)

take care,
zohrah xoxoxo

hi am new to the site check out my profile page and i hope to chat to lots of you soon i find it hard to speak to my friends about what i am going through nobody really fully understands unless they have it.

Hey Charlotte I'm Chloe
Hope everything is going well. Yeah i'm the same,no one knows what your going through, unless you have cancer,and my friends were the same. Your the same person but i felt like i was an alien to them. I had bone cancer and my treatment finished about 2 and 1/2 years ago now. But even now i feel different to my friends.
Keep strong and positive
chloe xx

I'm new to this site, too, Charlotte. (So please check out my profile page, too! I need friends who know what it is like to go through/have gone through what we have.)
I have not been sick for 8 years, but I still don't talk about being sick (and even deny being sick to those I've met much later on) because I am treated as a completely different person. I feel like the same person, but if people find out accidentally from one of my childhood friends then they feel they need to redefine the way they see me and treat me as the new person they see me as.
I have another friend who was successfully cured of retinoblastoma (she is in remission after a short scare last year), and she likes having people know that she had cancer and that her little sister still has cancer. She enjoys life, has huge energy and an even bigger smile, and is thoroughly involved in the "child cancer community" here in Chch, NZ. So I guess while it seems a lot of people I know feel isolated from all those who don't have it, it is possible for some to sort of "grow" into the image of a cancer patient.

But I feel just like all the other people on this page. Especially Zohrah, because I "was a really graceful little girl' throughout diagnosis and treatment, but from the age of 11 I have suffered from depression and sudden-onset OCD. I think it just caught up with me, but I couldn't do anything about it because I still wanted to be that little girl the nurses liked smiling at during chemo.

Hi Chloe,
Well, I should probably start by saying I'm kinda new at this. I mean the whole thing. I was diagnosed when I was 10 and now i'm 14, i gotta admit it's kinda weird because I've never really spoken to anyone about the cancer yet. So my advice might not be the best.
I feel I kinda do understand you although everyone is different. I kinda always felt it was something I had to fight alone. Thinking back on it the method I used for escaping it was actually kinda cute, although kinda silly at the same time. During the chemo and radiotherapy I felt like he cancer was the bad guy and I had to totallt kick it's backside. Silly huh? But that was what got me through, that and my family, but when it was all over, I was confused, I had no idea what to do, the bad guy was gone. I was angry because no matter how hard I tried to explain it, things never seemed to make sense in my head. People told me everything happened for a reason, and I couldn't find a reason. I was scared, more scared then when I found out I had cancer because I was lost. The cancer even though many questions weren't answered, I knew what I had to do. I had to get better for myself and my family but what do you do when you have nothing to do? Does this make any sense at all??
Anyway putting the depressing stuff aside, yh we all get the aae (annoying after emotions) and I guess all we can do is try to seperate things. No one can ever possibly know how we feel, even if they have the exact same illness because we all react differently, it's what makes us so unique. And unique is good. ;-) But when I was suffering from AEE I realised I took it out on the people who didn't understand exactly because they couldn't understand, it made me frustrated, I shouldn't have. I learnt we have to be patient with them too. Just like they are trying so hard to comfort us, we have to try hard to understand that they never will understand, but they will always be there for us. So talk to your friends, even if they don't understand, they do care, and knowing that alone sometimes is all it takes to make us feel better.
Sorry for such a long letter. Man I can type!!;-) Anyway I hope reading this extremely long thing helped. ;-P

Hello, i totally agree the cancer is gone but its left me metally and physically scared! i dont feel anyone ever will understand unless they have been through it themselves. i never though i would actually say this but for me the treatment was the easy part its getting life back to normal and excepting it that has been a REALLY hard part for me :(
if you want to chat im here to talk be nice to talk to someone who truely understands
Hollie x

Hello,
When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was 9 and so I hardly knew what was happening, let alone my friends. I think the only real times it hit home to them was when they visited me and saw my hair falling out, or when I was in pain and things like that, but even then I don;t think you realise what it's like until you go through that. In a way I also have the same thing with my parents, they think they know what it was like for me but really they only know one side, the onlooking side. Don't get me wrong, my family was and still is amazing and I don't know what i would have done without their support, but still it just isn't the same is it?
I found after cancer I got really angry very quickly, I would just snap and go off on one, ranting at anyone who bothered me. Also, I now sometimes have days where I will cry at the slightest thing, and nothing can cheer me up. I still have moments like that, and it's really hard because how can your family and friends understand that something that happened years ago is still affecting how you think and feel?
It's so good to know that it isn't just me making up excuses for what I do, and that I really am being rational! Just hang on in there, and hopefully some day it'll all die down :)

Molly x

i thought i was the only one lol
i was put in remission almost a year ago (in 2 days its gonna be a year) and when i tried to go back to college people just never said anything about it which agivated me bacause its all i could talk about, i was glad that they treated me normally but they tip toed around the subject. i still get the range of emotions from panic to depression to feeling insanely happy,
im trying to get back to some normality but at the moment im always getting ill which make it hard for me to adjust to everything.
but evrything falls into place eventually i like to think =]
and i think having a group of 'cancer friends' helps because no matter how much people try they will neve understand what youve been through or know how to react unless they have been through the same
hope i helped a bit =]

Hey everyone who has commented back. Havn't been on the website for a while, the time just flys! Everyone made real true,valuable points which has really helped to put things into perspective. I'm feeling more positive and focused about things. Trying to live life to the full, to take every opportunity, to give things a try and whether i fly or fall it doesn't matter, as longs as i tried my best. There are days when its hard to get back because the past still stays with you, sometimes i find having cancer is a part of my identity but then i think it shouldn't be as having csncer is the past and i should move forward and not hide behind the fact that i had it...if that makes sense. This guy said to look at things i can do rather than what i can't do. To try and look at the positives rather than the negatives. I know its easier said than done but i think its a good point. So thats what i've been trying to do, things aint as bad as it seems when you look at reality. Anyway, i'm rambling on now lol, hope any of
these points i've learnt will help you guys :)

Chloe x