Your physical treatment may appear to be over when you leave the hospital. However, the treatment may have caused temporary or permanent changes to your body. For example, you may have had surgery to remove part of your body, or which has changed the way that a particular part of your body works. Chemotherapy or radiotherapy can also have temporary or permanent effects on the body.

The possible physical effects of cancer treatment are discussed in our section on long-term effects of treatment, but the emotional effects of living with a changed body are equally important.

Although you may feel that you can now put the cancer behind you, it is possible that your emotional recovery may be just beginning.

As your hospital check-ups become less frequent, your family and friends may comment that this is a good sign, and of course it is. However, going to the hospital often gives people a sense of security, as well as being a place of treatment, and many people describe feeling marooned and a little frightened when they no longer need to go back regularly. You may feel surprised by strong emotions, such as:

• fear that the cancer will come back
• anger that you are not able just to get on with life again
• irritation that the people around you do not understand how you feel.