Sophie Hartley was eight years old when diagnosed with bone cancer in 2005. Now 27, she explains how this affected the relationship she has with herself.
I’ve been in cancer remission for almost 20 years, having been diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma in my femur (thigh bone) as a child. I had a year of chemotherapy and a full knee replacement, before going into remission around a year after my diagnosis. While in remission, I’ve had lots of surgery and orthopaedic care to treat the lasting effects of having a knee replacement. These were mainly leg-lengthening surgeries to treat my ever-changing leg-length discrepancy, where my left leg would grow naturally, and my right leg would need to be lengthened with surgery due to the metal prosthesis that replaced my knee.
How this has impacted me
In total, I had a dozen surgeries over a decade. So, my teenage years felt like a revolving door of limping, operations, leg pain and physiotherapy. This had a big impact on my life. I felt misunderstood and ‘different’, which presented itself in various ways in my relationships with my peers and family.
However, the relationship that cancer remission has impacted the most in my life is the one I have with myself. When we think about relationships, and how cancer may change them, this isn’t often considered – but, when you think about it, we’re the person we speak to the most, spend the most time with and know the best.
This has given me the clarity to recognise remission for what it is: a beautiful second chance at life filled with joy, grief, pain, confusion and learning.
The constant re-learning of how to walk and loss of physical ability chipped away at my confidence and happiness as a child and teen. I held huge shame and embarrassment about my experience of childhood cancer and its long-lasting effects. This has an immeasurable impact on the relationship I have with myself. With distance from my diagnosis has come a lot of reflection on how I care for this. I have had to reframe a lot of my thinking. I had a Catholic upbringing where we were taught to treat others as you would yourself, but I’ve had to flip this to treat myself how I would others. I still catch me bullying myself for my disability and the mental effects of cancer treatment, talking to myself mentally in a way I’d never dream of speaking to anyone else in the same situation.
How I’m reframing my thinking
I’m currently trying to reframe my thoughts to be more compassionate toward myself. In remission, we must allow ourselves the space to be kind and considerate with ourselves. We don’t need to tick off huge bucket lists to make our lives worth living, it’s enough to simply be who we are.
A big thing for me has been changing my language around cancer. I describe myself as being in cancer remission, rather than as a cancer survivor. This is something I find important in reinforcing to myself, and others, that cancer remission is its own chapter. It also doesn’t use fighting language, which I found increased ‘survivor’s guilt’ and made me feel deep shame for any negative feelings.
This has given me the clarity to recognise remission for what it is: a beautiful second chance at life filled with joy, grief, pain, confusion and learning. And I get to live it with every past version of myself, bringing eighty-year-old Sophie along from her hospital bed to experience it all with me. As long as I’m doing what is right for past and present versions of me, that’s what’s important, and the relationship I have with myself is improving more each day.
From Contact magazine issue 104 | Autumn 2024
