Catastrophising Cancer

One of the least visible challenges of living with cancer is not always the disease itself, but how it is held by other people.

2025, the Year of the Wood Snake, asked me to sit with medical uncertainty. I found myself back inside uncertainty. Surveillance scans. PET results that didn’t quite line up. A lymph node that appeared, persisted, and resisted certainty. Not growing fast enough to declare itself. Not disappearing enough to reassure. Not clearly benign. Not clearly malignant. Just… present. Waiting.

Existing in that long, quiet corridor between probably nothing and we can’t ignore this. The Snake understands this territory. It lives in the in-between. It does not rush to name what is still forming.

I learned how to live there too.

But while uncertainty became a discipline for me, it became something else for those watching from the outside. For some, the word metastasis collapsed time. Futures were grieved before facts existed. Fear rushed ahead of medicine.

The Snake noticed this.

From the inside, this kind of uncertainty becomes strangely familiar. You learn how to live in the grey. You make room for ambiguity. You regulate your nervous system around waiting, around not knowing, around decisions that have to be made without guarantees.

If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know I had cancer treatment back in 2023. What I haven’t talked about is how I lost my closest friends then.

One of the quieter challenges of this year was not the scans themselves, but the way others responded to them. From the outside uncertainty often gets catastrophised.

There is often an unspoken expectation that the person with cancer will perform the appropriate emotion — fear, devastation, visible grief — so others know how to stand beside it. When that performance doesn’t happen, people don’t know where to place themselves.

My steadiness unsettled some. My privacy was misread as avoidance. My calm was mistaken for denial.

But the Snake does not thrash when watched. It conserves energy. It sheds inwardly.

As the months passed from May, then September, then December, the scans continued to highlight the same deep groin lymph node. PET scans lit it up. MRI scans called it structurally normal. Biopsy didn’t give a clear answer. Medicine moved carefully, deliberately, without drama.

But outside the clinic, something different happened.

For some people, the word metastasis immediately collapsed the future. Conversations grew heavy before they needed to. Eyes filled with grief that hadn’t been invited. There was an unspoken expectation that I would be visibly distressed that I would share fear, sadness, or panic so others knew how to respond.

When I didn’t, when I stayed measured, practical, and calm, discomfort followed.

When Calm Disrupts the Narrative

There is something unsettling for people when the person with cancer is not performing devastation.

I wasn’t denying what was happening. I wasn’t minimising risk. I was simply living inside a long medical process that required steadiness rather than collapse. The scans demanded patience, not panic.

But calm doesn’t always translate well to those watching from the outside. It can be mistaken for avoidance. Privacy for emotional distance. Regulation for denial.

And so, the questions came:

“How are you really?”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“I don’t know how you’re coping.”

What they were often asking, without realising it, was permission to grieve. Cancer brings people face to face with their own vulnerability. Their own fear of loss. Their own unfinished stories. And when those feelings rise, they can be projected outward.

This year required regulation, not collapse. Discernment, not drama. I needed my nervous system intact for decisions that had to be made without guarantees.

The person with cancer becomes the vessel.

There can be an unspoken expectation that uncertainty will be narrated emotionally, and the pain will be shared so others can feel included, useful, or reassured. If that doesn’t happen, they don’t know how to stand beside it.

But living with cancer does not create an obligation to carry other people’s fear.

The Snake taught me that not every process is communal. Not every fear needs to be shared. Not every uncertainty needs narration. There is a subtle pressure to carry not only the illness, but the grief of others. To reassure. To include. To soften their discomfort by offering visible suffering.

But the Snake does not carry what is not hers.

During months of scanxiety with the long lead-ups, the endless waiting before imaging, the heavy hours after, my energy was already spoken for. I needed my energy to stay present in my body.

The Snake reminded me: boundaries are not cruelty. They are conservation.

Living With Medical Uncertainty

What 2025 has taught me is that uncertainty is not a crisis state. It is a skill.

I am learning how to stay present in my body, to tolerate ambiguity, to make careful decisions about without certainty. To remain clear of panic. There is no spare capacity to manage the emotional fallout of other people’s catastrophising.

Calm is not denial. It is living with cancer wisely. This doesn’t require constant emotional expression. It requires regulation, boundaries, and trust.

The most supportive people don’t assume how I feel. They don’t rush ahead of the facts. They let me set the tone. They speak to me about ordinary things of their lives, but never other people’s. They don’t try to fill the silence with the dramas of other people’s stuff. They don’t try to diminish my experience with the worse experiences others are going through. It is not a competition.

They don’t disregard the everyday pain, suffering or just discomfort of dealing with scanxiety, treatments and after effects.

Helpful support comes from those who ask questions without needing emotional performance in return. Conversation helps me process the information in real time. This means I make decisions on how to move forward, without falling into fear or hopelessness.

Cancer already asks enough of the person living inside it.

We shouldn’t also be asked to carry the fear, grief, and unfinished emotional work of everyone around us. Sometimes the greatest act of care is not sharing the pain but allowing the person with cancer to remain whole, grounded, and themselves.

Even in uncertainty.

The Final Shedding

As the Year of the Snake moved towards its close (Chinese New Year is 17 February – 3 March), the question is: How do I want to live with what I know and what I don’t want?

In January I am undergoing an intensive, high dose, stereotactic radiation treatment. This is going to be 5 treatments spread over two weeks that targets the mass in my lymph node. If it is cancer (metastasis) my radiation oncologist is confident this will be successful. I won’t know for 3 months. I have already had the first, and it feels so weirdly uneventful after the pain of treatment in 2023.

Choosing radiation at the end of this cycle feels like a final shedding that is precise, contained, deliberate. Not a reaction to fear, but a completion. At the same time, I shed something else: the belief that I am responsible for carrying other people’s emotions about my body.

The Snake finishes its work thoroughly. Nothing essential is left unexamined.

Only after this inward work does the Fire Horse make sense.

The Horse cannot move freely while burdened with other people’s fear. Fire cannot burn cleanly when it is dampened by projection and expectation. The Snake taught me how to live wisely inside uncertainty medically, emotionally, relationally.

The Fire Horse now asks a different question: How do you want to live once you stop managing everyone else’s fear?

And the answer feels lighter already.