Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy — I Don’t Know What I Was Expecting

I don’t know what I thought radiotherapy would be like.

Maybe quieter.
Maybe cleaner.
Maybe less personal.

Chemo had already stripped me bare — my energy, my appetite, my sense of normal — so I think part of me assumed radiotherapy would just be another box to tick. Another thing to endure. Another thing people would say “you’ve got this” about.

I didn’t have it.
I still don’t.

Radiotherapy is strange because it’s so precise and so brutal at the same time. You lie there perfectly still while something invisible passes through you, burning cells that don’t care whether they belong to cancer or to you. You’re told it won’t hurt — and technically, it doesn’t. Not in the moment.

But afterwards?

Afterwards, your body remembers.

I remember lying on that table, staring at the ceiling, holding my breath when they told me to. I remember thinking how exposed I felt — not physically, but emotionally. Like my body had become a problem to be fixed, managed, measured. Like I was no longer a person, just a site.

A stomach.
A tumour.
A target.

I walked in each time pretending I was calm. Smiling at the staff. Cracking jokes because that’s what I do when I’m terrified. But inside, something was cracking quietly.

Radiotherapy didn’t just attack the cancer — it attacked my illusion of control.

With chemo, there’s movement. Drips. Bags. Time passing. With radiotherapy, there’s stillness. Silence. Too much space to think. Too much time to realise that this isn’t just treatment — it’s acceptance.

Acceptance that the cancer didn’t stop when I asked it to.
Acceptance that my body didn’t protect me just because it had already been through hell once.
Acceptance that surviving before doesn’t guarantee anything now.

The fatigue is different. Heavier. Deeper. It sinks into your bones and doesn’t leave. Food tastes wrong. Your stomach burns and rebels. Sleep comes in fragments. Pain slips in sideways — not always sharp, but constant enough to wear you down.

And no one really prepares you for the emotional fallout.

The anger.
The grief.
The quiet, creeping fear that arrives when you’re alone at night and your house is too quiet and your thoughts are too loud.

People ask how radiotherapy is going.

I say, “Yeah, okay.”
Because what else do you say?

Do you say:

  • I’m scared it’s not working?

  • I’m scared it is, and this is still my life now?

  • I’m scared of how much strength this is taking from me?

Radiotherapy forced me to confront something I’d been avoiding — that this isn’t just about fighting anymore.

It’s about living with uncertainty.

Some days I feel calm. Almost peaceful.
Other days I feel robbed. Furious. Exhausted by the unfairness of having to be brave again.

And underneath all of it is the quiet grief of knowing I don’t get to plan the way other people do. I don’t get to assume next summer, next Christmas, next anything.

Radiotherapy didn’t come with drama or tears in the treatment room.

It came later.
In the car.
In the shower.
In the moments I catch myself taking photos “just because.”

I don’t know what I was expecting.

But I know this — radiotherapy changed me. Not because of what it did to my body, but because of what it forced me to see.

That I’m still here.
That I’m still afraid.
That both things can exist at the same time.

The Woman in the chair Next to me

Jackie in the Chair Next to Me

During chemo, you start to recognise people.

Not by name at first — by energy. By the way they sit. By the look in their eyes. There was an older woman, maybe in her sixties, who I kept seeing. I named her Mary in my head. She just looked like a Mary. Calm. Kind. Familiar.

This week, she spoke to me.

She asked my name and said she’d seen me there a few times.

“I’m Susie. Or Sue,” I said.

She smiled.
“Nice to meet you, sweetheart. I’m Jackie. Battling breast cancer.”

I liked her immediately.

I told her my story in the way cancer patients do — quick, factual, stripped of emotion because otherwise it’s too much.

“Started as stage 2 bowel cancer. It’s stage 3 now. Metastasised to my stomach. It’s small. I’m having radiotherapy.”

She looked at me properly then.

“You’re only young.”

“I’m forty,” I said. “So… not that young.”

She laughed.
“Oh, you look younger.”

Something loosened in my chest.

“Jackie,” I said, smiling, “you’re now my best friend.”

She noticed my mum then.

“I’ve seen you here with your mum.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t let my eldest come. I don’t want them seeing me like this. I come alone sometimes too — Mum struggles with it. Watching your kid go through this… I get it. I’d be the same. She says she’d take it from me if she could.”

Jackie nodded.
“She’s a protective mum.”

“She really is.”

Then she said something that landed heavier than she probably realised.

“People find it hard when you tell them you have cancer.”

I nodded.

“Yeah. They do.”

She smiled knowingly.
“Well, telling them you’re cured is harder.”

I looked at her, confused.

“Because then you’ve got no excuse not to go to parties you don’t want to go to.”

I laughed. A proper laugh. The kind that surprises you.

I liked Jackie. A lot.

“So,” she said, tilting her head, “are you married?”

“No. Divorced. Single.”

She leaned in slightly.

“Oh, be careful of men who say they want a Cancer.”

I blinked.
“What?”

She grinned.
“They mean the star sign — not a woman with cancer.”

I snorted. Actually snorted. Loud. Ugly. Unapologetic laughter.

“Jackie, that was a good one.”

She wasn’t finished.

“Any of your friends avoiding you?”

I nodded.

“Tell them it’s proven one in two people are diagnosed with cancer. So statistically, the safest place is next to you.”

By that point, I was crying with laughter.

“I’m stealing that,” I told her.

She patted my arm gently.

“It’s better to laugh, darling. My daughter, Robin — she’s so serious.”

And there it was.

In a room full of machines and fear and quiet suffering, this woman — this stranger — gave me something no medication ever has.

Permission to laugh.
Permission to still be human.
Permission to not let cancer take everything.

Jackie didn’t know my kids’ names.
She didn’t know my history.
She didn’t need to.

She sat in the chair next to me and reminded me that even here — especially here — connection still matters.

And sometimes, your best friend is just the person who makes you laugh when you didn’t think you could.