It’s over. The treatment is done, the results were positive, more than positive: perfect. No cancer cells to be found in any of the tests, good recovery from surgery, rejoice! Back to normal, back to work, back to leading a nice life with my little family. Working, planning for holidays, looking at real estate ads, helping Alice to do her homework. Routine! Normal, goddammit!

But also not. Any person who’s had a life threatening condition knows, there’s a fundamental change. The trust that Everything Is Going To Be All Right, deluded as it was, is gone.

Twinges and aches, which beforehand were associated with age and life, are now a cause for concern.  What if it was …? Daily palpation of breasts. Breasts, let me tell you, are tricky. They’re naturally full of lumps of various sizes. Is a lump larger than it was yesterday? Is it harder? Does this look like the skin is discoloured? Changing tack, what’s the most likely sites for secondary cancers? I’ve got this stitch in my side, what if it was …?

I’ve read various articles and a book on the topic of cancer, which doesn’t necessarily help. Cancerous cells, I’m told, are the result of many, up to hundreds mutations. Not all of them play a role, a few key ones which trigger the uncontrolled growth. Cancer is the result of a bunch of tiny mistakes in the copying process.

Many of us walk around with a smattering of ‘microtumours’: abovementioned mutated cells which are kept tiny by our immune system, and can be kept that way forever. But if the immune system fails or weakens, things can change.

That is a difficult thought: some of us carry the disease within us, sometimes from an early age, waiting, seeded all through our bodies. What we do in our life, what we eat, where we live, how peaceful our internal life is all have an effect.

I’ve never been careless with my health, but now I pay attention, sometimes to the point of obsession. We all absorb quantities of pesticides from our vegetables, additives from various types of meat, heavy metals and PCBs from fish. We inhale car exhausts, scented candles. Our foods, our cosmetics contain a surprising quantity of ingredients that go from mildly suspect to actively harmful ‘can cause cancer in mice but we haven’t gotten round to legislating against it yet’. Refined sugars and bleached white flour, and alcohol are all our enemies. The plastic containers we use contaminate our food with carcinogenic organic compounds. The sun works on turning our skin against us with its death rays. Stress is also bad, so I get stressed because I’m stressed. Not getting enough sleep can harm you, which is stressing me since I’m having trouble fitting in eight hours of sleep. Do I drink enough water?

On bad days it feels like the world is full of bad choices. An incident or an ache can set me off, my head a carousel of feverish thoughts and fears. Sometimes coming to tears for not a lot of reasons.

“I’m going to die!” the human cries. Du-uh, as my daughter would say. We’ll all die eventually. Just, you know, not yet? Not right now? Later, in an indeterminate number of years, maybe? Diary’s pretty full today.

There are good days. On good days, I realize that fear lives in the brain and has no (or little) impact on reality. It is going to happen, or it isn’t, and thinking about it won’t affect life one way or the other. That being the case, it’s better not to spend energy thinking about it, and to focus on the present, here, now. The people around me. People in general.

Worrying about my health when it’s mostly alright is a privilege - many people on this earth have bigger fish to fry, like having enough food, a roof over their heads, education, security. Some of the worrying cycles could be better spent being helpful or kind to the people who need it.

Hopefully, eventually, the balance of the good days will come naturally. I’ll remember more consistently that while it lasts, it’s good to be alive.

Note: there are charities that help people deal with this kind of emotions. I might get round to contacting one myself.