6 Months Later

Returning to Work

At the start of the year, I decided it was time to return to work.

It felt like the next logical step. The operation was behind me, the pathology results had been encouraging and physically I was recovering. Going back to work seemed less like a decision and more like the natural continuation of the journey.

The reality turned out to be rather different.

One of the things I quickly discovered was that recovery doesn't stop simply because you're ready to move on. Fatigue has no interest in your plans. Neither does pain. Both have a habit of turning up exactly when you would prefer they didn't.

For a while I tried to convince myself that I could push through it. After all, I had spent months focused on getting through surgery and coming out the other side. Compared to that, sitting at a desk and concentrating on work shouldn't have felt difficult, yet it did.

Tasks that I would previously have completed without much thought suddenly seemed to require far more concentration than I expected. My energy levels were unpredictable and I found myself becoming exhausted by things that would once have passed unnoticed. Some days were perfectly manageable. Others felt like hard work from the moment I got out of bed.

What made it particularly frustrating was that from the outside everything appeared to be moving in the right direction. The surgery had been successful. Recovery was progressing. I was back at work.

Looking back, I think I had underestimated how much recovery was still taking place behind the scenes. The wound was healing, but there was still discomfort. My body was recovering, but it was demanding energy that I no longer had available for other things. Mentally, I was still processing an experience that had changed my life far more than I realised at the time.

Eventually I reached the point where I had to accept something I didn't particularly want to accept. Wanting to return to work and being ready to return to work are not always the same thing.

That wasn't an easy conclusion to reach. Work represented normality, routine and progress. Stepping back from it felt uncomfortably close to admitting defeat.

Returning to The Christie

By April it was time for my six-month scan and blood tests.

On paper, it was a routine follow-up appointment. The sort of milestone that everyone expects after major cancer surgery. In reality, I found myself dreading it far more than I expected.

This wasn't my first visit back to The Christie since the operation, but it was the first one that felt truly significant. The previous visit had been about recovery. This one felt different. This one had consequences.

What surprised me most was how strongly I reacted to being back there.

The Christie had become associated with some of the most difficult moments of my life. The consultations, the discussions about surgery, the preparation, the waiting and everything that followed. Walking back through the doors brought much of that flooding back in a way I wasn't prepared for.

Logically, I knew I was there for a scan and some blood tests. Emotionally, it felt like much more than that.

There are certain experiences that leave a mark long after they have finished. Months can pass without thinking about them, yet something as simple as returning to the same place can bring them rushing back to the surface.

The operation itself was over. Recovery was well underway. Yet standing in the hospital again made it clear that part of me was still processing everything that had happened.

The scan itself was uneventful. The blood tests were routine. From the outside it was just another hospital appointment; from the inside it felt like much more than that.

Waiting for the Results

If the visit back to The Christie was difficult, the period that followed was harder.

By that point there was nothing left to do. The scan had been completed and the blood tests had been taken. Somewhere within the hospital systems were the results that would determine what happened next, but until somebody typed the letter and dropped it in the post, those results were inaccessible.

All that remained was waiting.

Amongst cancer patients there is a term that appears regularly: Scanxiety. Before my diagnosis I had never heard it. Now I understand it completely.

The strange thing about waiting for scan results is that life doesn't pause while you're doing it. Work continues. Conversations continue. Ordinary days continue. From the outside there is very little difference between somebody waiting for scan results and somebody who isn't. Internally, however, things can feel very different.

For me, the results occupied a space somewhere in the background of almost every day. Not constantly, and not to the point where I couldn't think about anything else, but enough that they were always there. A quiet presence sitting behind everything else, waiting for an opportunity to remind me that the future might look very different depending on a conversation that hadn't happened yet.

The rational part of me knew there was little point worrying. Whatever the scan showed had already happened. The images and blood results already existed. The answer was already there. The problem is that anxiety has very little interest in rationality.

It doesn't matter that worrying won't change the outcome. It doesn't matter that the specialists are doing their jobs. It doesn't matter that statistically things may be in your favour. You still wait, you still wonder.

I suspect many PMP patients will recognise this part of the journey immediately because it receives far less attention than surgery, treatment or recovery. Yet emotionally, it can be one of the hardest periods to navigate.

At least during treatment there is a sense of movement. Appointments happen. Decisions are made. Progress, however uncomfortable, is visible.

Waiting is different. Waiting is passive and leaves room for imagination. And imagination has a habit of filling gaps with possibilities that are often far worse than reality.

By the time the results finally arrived, I realised I wasn't just waiting for information. I was waiting for permission to exhale.

The Results

When the results finally arrived, they were exactly what I had hoped for.

There was no evidence of disease.

After weeks of waiting, it was difficult to describe the relief. The fears that had occupied so much space over the previous few weeks were, at least for now, unnecessary.

It was very good news. Family and friends were understandably delighted and I found myself having the same conversation several times over the following days. People wanted to know how the appointment had gone and whether everything was okay. The answer, thankfully, was yes.

What surprised me, however, was how often I found myself clarifying what that result actually meant. A clear scan is obviously the outcome every patient hopes for, but it isn't quite the same thing as being cured. Perhaps that's because PMP has a habit of teaching patience whether you want to learn it or not. You become accustomed to milestones, follow-up appointments and future scans. Good news remains good news, but it exists within a longer timeline.

For me, the result felt less like the end of something and more like reaching a checkpoint that I had been working towards for months.

All of those things mattered enormously.

Yet as the relief of the result settled, I found myself reflecting on the previous few months and realising that much of what I had been struggling with had very little to do with the scan itself.

The fatigue was still there and the changes to my body were still there. The result hadn't changed those things, nor should I have expected it to. What it did change was the uncertainty.

For the first time since the diagnosis, I felt able to look ahead without an immediate milestone dominating the horizon. The next appointment would come when it came. The next scan would happen when it happened.

For now, I had the result I wanted. That was enough.