I nearly died last year and I’m livid about it

Yeah, yeah, anger is all part of the healing process.

An audio version of this article (narrated by me) is available here:

“I’m absolutely fuming!” I announce to my cancer therapist, slamming her office door open and throwing myself into the kind of uncomfortable plastic chair that immediately makes you think of hospitals. “I’m angry all the time. I’m a pass-agg monster. I can’t find my AirPods and so I had to come all the way here just listening to my thoughts and my thoughts are such dicks!”

“That’s great,” my therapist replies, leaning back in her own (infinitely more comfortable) chair, a half-smile on her face.

“I’m glad someone’s happy about it,” I snarl. (Told you I was pass-agg.)

“Remember how you said before that you wanted to have a proper cry – to really feel the grief that you were worried was building up inside of you? Well, this is it. You’re in it. You’re feeling. Anger is an important and necessary part of processing what happened to you. Welcome to healing.”

“Welcome to healing my arse,” I mutter. “Sew it on a pillow.”

So yes, apparently I’m in the angry phase of post-cancer healing, which is funny because if you’d asked me how I was getting on I would have screamed, “I AM FINE. NOTHING TO SEE HERE. LALALALALA” in your face. And, while this outburst may well have tipped you off that I was, in fact, very much not fine, I would have been none the wiser. I have a tendency to slam down the emotional shutters when BIG things happen and instead focus on making sure everyone else is okay. This works brilliantly for a while until one day while walking down the street, humming a merry tune, I’ll be surprised to discover that I’m crying. “What on earth do I have to cry about?” I’ll wonder. “Nothing has happened to me!”

And now, because I am the most impatient person in the world, I’m really struggling with the fact that I am not already swinging from the chandeliers, literally or metaphorically. And that makes me angry. And that makes me pass-agg. And that makes me British.

For any new readers, a quick recap: I was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer in March 2024, a few weeks after giving birth to my first child, Billy. This was after being disgustingly ill for over a year and being told by various medical peeps to pipe down, get my shit together or to “try swimming because it’s really good during pregnancy”. (I’ll tell you what’s good during pregnancy: NOT HAVING CANCER.)

My tumour was 8cm by 7.6cm (the size of a noteworthy grapefruit). I was fitted with an emergency stoma so my bowel didn’t explode, had three months of hardcore chemotherapy and then underwent an operation to remove the tumour as well as 30cm of my bowel and to reverse the stoma. In August, I was given the all-clear.

(Is “fitted” the correct word in regards to getting a stoma or am I only using it because I associate it with plumbing…which seems appropriate?)

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It appears that the process of sifting through the clusterfuck of last year is actually only just beginning though. With cancer, when the day-to-day immediacy of being ill is over, you ride the high of getting through it, then you have to navigate what your life – and body – look like now, and then, when the adrenaline has well and truly dissipated, you’re left with a proper smorgasbord of emotions: joy, gratitude, compassion, happiness, awe, calmness, hope, fear, sadness, guilt, shame, anxiety, confusion and RAGE.

Anger is apparently a standard part of the post-cancer grieving process. You’re livid at the unfairness of what happened and what you lost, but the fury also, in part, masks a very raw fear that it may not yet be completely over. Illness comes with its own unique grief in that what you’re sad about isn’t necessarily at an end; it may very well return to bite you in the colon. My six-month checkups are coming up. Indeed, when this hits your inboxes on Friday, I’ll be at the hospital having a colonoscopy. (BIG DAY OUT!) Then, next week there’s a blood test and the week after that a CT scan. We’ll get the results for everything in February. My therapist assures me that the more of these tests and the more good results I get under my belt, the more my anger and fear will recede and the more I’ll be able to trust that things will be okay for a while. At the moment though, life feels like a stuttering motorcar, the engine suddenly kicking in before quickly stalling again.

If I’m honest, I find this anger quite thrilling. It’s keeping me motivated and energised to see these tests through. I’ll practise gratitude in a week or so – I’m really good at seeing the good things in life, don’t worry. I’m genuinely looking forward to feeling positive and hopeful again because that is my normal vibe and I enjoy it. Meanwhile though, just for a short time, you can find me loudly and passive aggressively shouting at anyone who doesn’t thank me for opening a door for them or for getting out of their way on the street: “OH, YOU’RE WELCOME. DON’T WORRY, THIS IS WHAT I’M HERE FOR. ENJOY THE BIT OF THE STREET I JUST VACATED. ENJOY THIS OPEN DOOR. YEAH, SURE, I CAN STAND HERE IN THE GUTTER FOR YOU ALL DAY. IT’S NO MORE THAN I DESERVE. DON’T MIND ME! THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR.”

Absolutely fuming, pal.

Just One More Thing…

I’m sorry for disappearing on you. I wanted to spend some proper time with my beautiful boys and to begin connecting the dots to see what my family’s life looks like post-cancer and as new parents. Writing Just One More Thing every week took a lot of emotional energy and time that was instead needed to sieve through all of the hope and terror we’d been surviving and choking on, in order to work out what was here to stay and what we could leave behind.

If you left me a message or email via this app or by replying to a previous post, I’m afraid I won’t have seen them yet. I’m aiming to go through all of my notifications in the next few weeks and will reply ASAP. I’m also going to post weekly again. I love it and I miss it. Thank you for sticking with me, your support means more than you know. Now, enough of the niceties, I’m off to punch a wall.

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*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into at least 10 languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.