I have been looking for books and things about dealing with cancer as a traumatic experience, and I’ve found more things talking about cancer being caused by stress than about it being a cause of stress. No wonder I used to try to figure out whether I officially had PTSD – some sort of validation on emotional issues would be nice.

My hair is falling out like it fucking hates my scalp, I’m finding it a bit hard to catch my breath tonight (happens occasionally) and my back is aching. The last two things are definitely stress-related, and the first one is either stress, the menopause, or both. I’m not too worried about my hair falling out because that’s a cosmetic problem compared to the previous problem of actual cancer. It’s just super annoying finding it on my clothes and all over my hands when I wash my hair, and having to pull it out of my comb. And it’s pretty ironic that I said no to chemo and my hair is falling out anyway.

I have two hospital appointments next week so I don’t think that’s helping matters. Wondering if I should try counselling again but I don’t know what I’d say and I feel weird about paying someone to have a conversation with me, because I didn’t get much out of it last time.

I’m going back to work in a couple of weeks and I’m worried that everyone is going to just forget I ever had cancer, while here I am basically still recovering, emotionally if not so much physically anymore.

I hadn’t even been too bad with it lately, apart from the occasional replaying stuff in my head (which is as pointless as it sounds). Sometimes I’m just sad. And sometimes my body does annoying stuff that makes it feel like everything is still not quite right. Which of course it isn’t – it was fucking cancer.

I’m trying to write my memoir, which I think would fill a bit of a gap of the emotional post-cancer stuff not being talked about very much. But it’s very slow going and I’m not sure if it will help my stress or make me more stressed. Really, I just want to be as chilled out as possible so that I can stop picking hairs from off my favourite blanket.

Anyway, it’s been a really long day – my parents and I spent a few days in Reykjavik and travelled back today (see pic above, and more on Insta, so I’ve been awake since 6:40am and it’s almost not today anymore. Hopefully the things that feel like a lot now will feel like a lot less after some sleep.