Me & Me
When you hear the words “you have breast cancer”, your life seems to split into two parts — the person you were ten minutes before that moment, and the person you are now. For me, everything that was familiar suddenly felt distant, like I was watching myself on a video replay. One version of me had already slipped into the past — the old me. The other version was stepping into something completely unknown.
Almost immediately, appointments began to fill my Google calendar, which until then had only ever held work days. It became my new go-to place. I used to check my phone for messages; now I was checking my calendar for breast clinic consultations, scans, ultrasounds, mammograms, MRIs, biopsies, blood tests, surgical discussions and treatment plans.
Each one felt daunting. Not because I didn’t know what they were — I had full explanations in the vast selection of leaflets meant to prepare me and inform me of what was going to happen and how I would feel. But I can honestly say that nothing any person or leaflet could have said would have prepared me for the feelings I dealt with in that first month.
I was very lucky to have an amazing surgeon who answered everything I asked with straight, no-holds-barred honesty, which at that time was exactly what I needed. I had previously seen a TV documentary about the need for, and success rate of, chemotherapy, and I remember arguing that the odds were really rubbish. I can’t recall the exact figures — so please don’t quote me — but it was something like 85% of women would still be alive after five years whether they had chemotherapy or not, around 7% would have died of other causes, leaving 8% who would still be alive because of chemotherapy.
My argument was simple: why would I want to put myself through that for such poor odds? If it were a horse, I wouldn’t bet on it. Why would I put such aggressive medicine through my veins, lose my hair, and make myself sick? His answer was clear — it was his job to make sure I was in the 8%.
My mind did a full 360. I decided there and then that I would take anything and everything I was offered without question, because questioning it felt even scarier than what lay ahead. The “old me” was quaking in my boots. I didn’t do medication — I had to be crawling on the floor in absolute agony before I would take a paracetamol — and here I was signing up for some of the strongest chemicals possible.
My mind was trying to make sense of something far bigger than the information I had. Biopsies, tests and scans are frightening the first time, but they pass quickly. It’s the emotional weight of the results that lingers much longer. You try to be brave when the needle goes in, but inside you are terrified.
The mixture of total fear and sheer loneliness you feel lying exposed in a scan machine is overwhelming — and that’s before the fear and overthinking of what the results will mean for your life, your future, and the people you love. The 3am wake-ups, the “cancer conversations” running endlessly through your mind — it can all feel like too much. You wonder how you are ever going to get through this.
I noticed everything. The light. The smells. The sounds of the room. Even the music they played for me. It was as though my body was recording every detail of every moment.
Then came the waiting — by far the hardest part mentally. Waiting for biopsy results. Waiting for staging. Waiting for treatment options. Waiting to feel stable again, to make sense of what was happening to me. Time stretches strangely, turning days into something slow and heavy. Nights feel longer. Thoughts feel louder. You may appear calm, but inside your body feels like it’s buzzing with uncertainty.
And yet, life continued around me. Sometimes I was actively part of that life; other times I felt like I was looking in from the outside. That’s the only way I can explain it. Perhaps it was the old me fighting to stay, while the cancer version of me was fighting to get through the “zone” and find whatever came next.
I still made my bed. I went to work. I answered messages. I responded politely when people asked how I was. I tried every day to be positive and to hold on to normal, because normal felt like safety. I would laugh at something on television and then realise, for a moment, I had forgotten — and then I remembered.
I could have a really good day, go to bed, and then wake suddenly and think, I have cancer. I was existing in two realities at once: living everyday life while trying to understand a future that was unknown and completely out of my control. Mentally, this was incredibly hard.
I can’t remember the exact moment the “old me” left, but I do remember feeling mentally lighter once “cancer me” took over and accepted the fight. I would look in the mirror and see the same face, yet know something deep within me was already shifting. It’s difficult to explain. I had changed even before treatment had begun — not weaker, but wiser, more aware, more fragile, and more fierce.
If you are in your first month after diagnosis right now, you are not alone — even if it feels like you are. You are like so many others, simply moving forward one appointment at a time.
