When ill health becomes your whole personality

People ask how I’m doing lately, mostly out of kindness, as well as it’s the right thing to ask someone. To be honest I’ve started answering ‘fine thanks’, because the longer version feels very boring and quite frustrating on my part. I feel like where I am now is that ill health really has taken over and become my whole personality.

Before I got cancer I’d have described myself as a fairly healthy, fit person who’d had very minor health issues, which I know now is like winning the lottery - because to have gone 45 years like that is very, very lucky indeed. And my health was not a subject I talked much about or spent much time on! But when that all changed when I got breast cancer, it’s like since then, ill health seems to be all that defines me.

Of course it doesn’t. Of course I know that deep down I’m so much more than my health, but when you’ve got health concerns god it’s just so hard not to let it start being who you are now and how you feel about yourself on a daily basis.

18 months ago I got my cancer diagnosis, which was bad enough, but then what followed was chemo, surgery, sepsis, radiotherapy, IBS, fibroids (and thus heavy bleeding), cysts on my ovaries, anaemia and then the menopause, as well as the mental health challenges from the medication. I mean, when I look at this list on paper this really is such a lot for anyone to go through in 18 months, so it’s no wonder I’m feeling weary and over it at this stage. Who really wants to willingly go through all this?

I think if it had been something I only had to cope with, only for a couple of months say, I feel I would have still found it hard but got my head down, stayed focused, and got through it. Any health challenge is still never easy but the light at the end keeps you going, doesn’t it? The fact that it’s been so long of it now has made it feel as though lately I can’t shake this identity off.

Like it’s stuck to me. A label. Like a badge I can’t rip off.

So as not to slip into the depths of despair I quickly remind myself that I’m a lot, lot better than I was even 4 months ago and the niggles I have now are only niggles. Yes sometimes they still cause me to cancel or miss out on the odd thing, but this is much less than before. I try to tell myself I’m now at a good point and things are improving drastically. But this is work to do this. Daily work.

I hate toxic positivity as a concept because I don’t think it allows you to deal with your feelings properly (they only come up again and again if you try and fake happiness), however, I also believe that sometimes you’ve got to get to a point where you go, OK, it is what it is now, and you need to focus on the many, many other things that are great in your life, not just what’s going wrong.

Don’t laugh but to help with this I wrote a list recently of everything that I am outside of my health. Things such as being a superb organiser and not missing much, being a great listener, showing up for work on days when I don’t feel like it, being a calm parent when things escalate etc. And genuinely this has helped a lot to shift the focus off me only being an ill person.

We all know writing things down and then looking at them often helps, but it does work when all your brain can think of is ILL HEALTH, ILL HEALTH. You can go, okay thanks, but no, I’m also all of these amazing things.

In the brilliant book, The Cancer Survivor’s Companion, by Dr Frances Goodhart & Lucy Atkins, (recommended to me by a superb therapist), it says, “Write down one thing each day that you’ve done well. Gradually build this up to 3 or 4. This evidence forces your brain to recognise that your achievements really do exist. This in turn will boost your self-esteem”.

Looking at a list of what’s great about you as a whole / what you do well does make you feel a bit more capable and empowered, and helps you to see the bigger picture, which is way more than health. It’s far too easy to feel utterly consumed by one single identity and allow your brain to keep feeding it up on a loop.

I know this post won’t be for everyone but I wanted to share because I think poor health can be such a quiet problem for many. Like I say, this stuff is work, constant work, but to be honest I’m just not happy with letting this be my everything anymore because there’s just so much more to me than that.