On Thursday, I saw off my family to school and work, deliberated over what to wear, then cycled the five-ish miles to the Guardian office in the sunshine. I checked emails and chatted to colleagues about plans for the day. It was all very much like 27 June 2022, with one major difference: at lunchtime I didn’t pop out to the hospital and come back with a breast cancer diagnosis.
Realising it’s already two years on from that day is a shock, but what’s weirder is to think of the same day a year ago. I had finished my chemo and radiotherapy and had had my surgery but I was still on targeted drugs and felt absolutely exhausted – just the thought of getting on my bike made me need a sit-down. My hair was thin and several different lengths, I looked strangely grey and I was working just two days a week.
It feels so weirdly disconnected from where I was before and where I am now. Liz Truss’s government came and spectacularly went while I was off sick, and sometimes I have to check that it wasn’t a fever dream. There are gaps in what I know about some subjects because I wasn’t paying the same attention in between trips to the hospital, but in many ways it’s as if a whole year of my life didn’t happen.
I can remember one of the cancer nurses making a comment about when life got back to normal – “or probably a new normal”. Today’s normal seems very much like the old normal – and I’m not sure that’s entirely a good thing.
Don’t get me wrong. When I was ill I craved things returning to normal and I’m grateful they have been able to. There are differences between life before and life now: I have tablets to take because my thyroid and adrenal glands no longer work, bits of me aren’t real and I no longer seem to have any underarm hair. But generally I have been so lucky and life bears a striking resemblance to pre-June 2022. So much so that sometimes when my phone alarm goes off to remind me to take my hydrocortisone tablets, it feels like a surprise.
Often, I think it would be good if things were a bit different.
Sometimes, I feel as if I still want my illness to be taken into account by other people – like during business desk five-a-side football, when I’ve just missed an open goal and need an excuse, or when I’m struggling to keep up with my partner as he strides up a hill. Sometimes I want people to regard me as different – perhaps as though I have a new wisdom after my experience – and to regard my thoughts on matters as more meaningful than previously. Mostly, I kick myself for so quickly forgetting so many of the things I thought I would do differently if my treatment worked and I returned to health.
While I was ill I went to bed early and read books, I cancelled plans if I wasn’t feeling up to going out and I appreciated days sitting in the garden. I felt lucky to be reminded of how much I liked my home and how much I got from time spent with a good novel. I wondered why I hadn’t spent more time like this before, and told myself that those early nights and easy evenings would go on – I guess I didn’t imagine feeling well enough for things to be otherwise.
Now, already, I’m back to giving myself too much to do. I feel obliged to stick to plans and I spend a lot of time planning things to do on my days off. I stay at work later than I mean to and most of my days at home are spent on my feet, rather than sitting in the garden enjoying a novel. It took me almost two months to read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole – my son read it in a day.
Returning to normal feels a lot like the world post-Covid. We all swore we would never again go into work with a cold. That we would support local businesses, be greener, appreciate time with the ones we loved. The cost of living crisis put paid to some of that thinking, of course, but maybe we are also reassured by returning to all our old habits – even those that include sneezing our way into the office.
The normalness of my re-found normality does disguise a new fear of what the future holds (I am seeing someone about this), but otherwise perhaps it is an important stage in escaping a bad experience. I wanted to prove to myself that I had recovered, and living closely to how I did before is a good benchmark. Perhaps, now that I’ve done it, the way is open to make changes.
While 27 June is just a chance date – at another hospital I may have got my diagnosis on another day, or in other circumstances I may have found the lump weeks or months earlier, I imagine it will always now be a time to reflect. In that respect, however I end up living the rest of my life, I guess it will never be a normal day.
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Hilary Osborne is the Guardian’s money and consumer editor