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 altered the way that a particular part of your body functions. Chemotherapy or radiotherapy can also have temporary or permanent effects on the body. The possible physical effects of cancer treatment are discussed in 'Long-term effects of treatment.'

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 attend 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, and irritation that the people around you do not understand how you feel. Emotional reactions and how to deal with them are discussed later.

Your relatives and friends may find your feelings mixed and confused. They may not understand why you do not feel cheerful and positive, and enthusiastic about getting on with all the things that you used to do before the cancer. They may not be sure how to behave towards you now, and you may not know what to say to them. Ways of dealing with this are discussed in the following section.