Re work. I think it is so individual, and so much related to what job you actually do. I was lucky - I had two part time jobs, total of six and a half hours Mon-Fri - so although very long days, there was at least a change of scenery in between each. I won't say a 'break' as I got no more than half an hour at home for a cup of coffee in between school runs etc, but it was still easier than knowing I was facing an eight or nine hour stretch in one place. Tiring? Yes, very - but the upside for me was a return to normality, not a new normal, but the old one - and that was very empowering. I love the girls I work with at my day job (cooking in a school kitchen), and to be honest, as a cleaning supervisor in the evenings, if I didn't feel like doing much, I could get away without doing much!!!
But - my school job offered me promotion and extra hours if I would work one weekend in three (12-6, so not dire), and that's only about 12 weekends in an entire year, once you knock out school hols. It meant that the latest I would be home would be 5.45, not 8.45, I would have the school hols entirely free, so basically I won't have to work more than seven weeks without having a week off. When I was offered it, I realised just how desperately I wanted to quit my evening job - and since doing so, I have realised JUST how tired I really was.
The moral? (If this were an American soap) You CAN do it, you can still do anything you set your mind to, in my opinion - but if it is all too much, then admit it. Don't be frightened of going back to work, embrace it - but be realistic. There are huge positives to getting back out there again - I am once more a working woman and mum, not a cancer patient... and the social life improves along with it - but after, say, three or four months, take stock, sit back, how do you really feel? How do your closest friends/rellys view how you are doing? Can you cope? Could you do more? Or do you need to rethink your career?
Bear in mind that LiF and others have herceptin, too - and that is STILL chemo - my comments are more for those of us who escaped that, and are getting by with tamoxifen or similar. Or have finished treatment altogether.
Sorry for the lecture - but I do sometimes feel that bc can be an excuse for not getting back to living again - all well and good when you are still undergoing treatment, and only sensible.. but there has to be a time when you move on, or you will be an invalid forever. And we are all too damn important to be invalids or martyrs xxxxxxx
