the words my onco-psychologist said that finally stuck
I had been seeing my onco-psychologist for almost eight months before anything she said really landed. We'd meet in a small consulting room off the oncology ward at the hospital, with a box of tissues between us and a dodgy air-con unit rattling through summer. I had my list of worries on my phone, sorted into neat folders like a slightly unhinged project manager. She would nod, ask one quiet question, and then sit with the silence until I cracked. Most weeks I walked out thinking I had wasted her time. Then one Tuesday, somewhere between the chemo fog and a flat white from the café downstairs, her words finally stuck.
That single line rearranged the furniture in my head. It didn't cure me, didn't shrink the tumour, didn't pay the gap fee Medicare doesn't cover. It just shifted the way I carried everything else. I'm writing this down partly so I don't forget it, and partly because I have a feeling at least one of you needs to hear it too. If you've found your way to My Fabulous Boobies looking for something practical from another survivor, this is as practical as I get.
the chair by the window
The first time I walked into her room, I was ready to be fixed. I had a folder of printouts, a list of supplements a woman at my local quilting group swore by, and a five-year plan that assumed my body would cooperate. I sat in the chair closest to the door, ready to leave at any moment. She let me talk for almost the entire session before she said anything at all. When she finally spoke, it was to ask whether I had eaten breakfast. Not the cancer, not the prognosis, the weet-bix. Apparently that tells her more than any scan.
What I learned over the following months is that onco-psychology isn't about positivity. It's not about reframing the lump as a "growth opportunity", as a colleague cheerfully suggested over a Zoom call from his Brisbane office. It's about sitting with the actual mess of it, in a room that smells faintly of hand sanitiser, while someone trained to hold that mess keeps you company. The chair by the window became my weekly anchor, the one appointment I never rescheduled, even when the kids had the flu and my husband was in Sydney for work.
she told me to stop auditioning
Here's the sentence. She leaned forward, flicked the lid of her keep-cup, and said, "Nicole, you are not auditioning for the role of the brave cancer patient. You can just be a person going through something awful." I laughed, because it sounded like a line from a quirky Australian film. Then I cried, because she was bang on.
I had been auditioning for months. Trying out different versions of sick: the stoic one, the funny one, the inspirational Instagram one, the one who always brought slices to the infusion suite. Each version felt safer than admitting I was terrified, exhausted, and occasionally furious at strangers who told me their aunt had a similar thing and bounced back. The onco-psychologist pointed out that the audition itself was using up energy I needed for chemo, for my kids, for the basic business of staying alive. Drop the audition, she said, and see who's left.
The person left was crankier than I expected, and a lot funnier. She also stopped apologising for cancelling things. If you want to read another survivor's take on the strange friendships that grow out of treatment, the infusion suite piece on this site captures that mess beautifully.
what I thought healing looked like versus what it actually is
Before cancer, I had a very tidy idea of recovery. It looked like running again, like a wardrobe full of work clothes, like smiling in family photos without gritted teeth. The onco-psychologist drew a small table on her notepad one morning and asked me to fill in the two columns. Hers ended up being a lot more honest than mine.
| what I thought healing would be | what it actually looks like |
|---|---|
| Going back to my pre-cancer job full-time | Working three short days and feeling proud of it |
| A clean scan and a tidy emotional wrap-up | A clean scan and a low-grade hum of anxiety forever |
| Only crying at prescribed moments | Crying in the car park at Westfield, then going in for the socks |
| A new calm, wise version of me | A weirder, swearier, funnier version of me |
| Never asking for help again | Texting my sister at 6am for tea and sympathy |
| A clear plan with milestones | A loose plan with permission to change it weekly |
That table changed how I read survivor stories online. I started noticing that the people who said they were "thriving" usually meant something smaller and less photogenic than the word suggested. Real healing, the onco-psychologist said, is mostly subtraction. You cut away the parts of your old life that no longer fit, and you wait to see what's standing when the dust settles.
The biggest subtraction for me was the version of myself who thought she had to be impressive in the face of cancer. Once I let that version go, the rest of the columns started to feel possible. Working three days felt like a triumph, not a compromise. Crying at Westfield felt like a release, not a failure. Asking my sister for tea at 6am felt like a basic human need, not a weakness. The table is still pinned above my desk, slightly bent now, and I add new rows to it every few months.
the permission to be a terrible friend
A few sessions in, she asked me to list the people I had stopped returning calls to. The list was longer than I wanted to admit. My uni friend in Perth who had texted three times. A neighbour who dropped a lasagne in a foil tray with a hand-written card. A cousin who kept saying the right things in slightly the wrong way. I had ghosted them all because I didn't have the energy to be grateful, and because I worried that needing people meant I had failed at being strong.
She gave me a piece of paper and told me to write "permission slip" at the top. Then she dictated: I, Nicole, give myself permission to be a temporarily terrible friend, daughter, colleague, and human, while I get through this. I signed it with a shaky hand and stuck it on the fridge next to the school calendar. The kids thought it was hilarious. I cried again. The permission slip is still there, faded now, under a picture of my daughter in her netball uniform. I look at it on the days when the guilt creeps back.
saying no in strayan
Half the work of survivorship, it turns out, is learning how to say no without it turning into a scene. Australians are not great at this. We are raised to be easy-going, to chuck a snag on the barbie, to "she'll be right" our way through minor catastrophes. A breast cancer diagnosis is not a minor catastrophe, but the cultural habit of underplaying is hard to shake. I kept saying yes to catch-ups I couldn't manage, then collapsing in the car afterwards while my husband drove us home through the wet Brunswick streets.
The onco-psychologist helped me build a small library of polite, Aussie-sounding refusals. "Thanks so much, but I can't make arvo tea this week, rain check?" "I appreciate the invite, but my energy's a bit rubbish at the moment, hope you understand." "No worries, but I'm having a quiet one, catch you next time." Each phrase felt like a tiny act of rebellion, and each one saved me from the dreaded post-social crash. Saying no in strayan is still a work in progress, but I now have the words in my pocket when I need them. Some of you might be running classrooms, not infusion suites, but the same principle applies, as anyone who's read songs that keep a kinder class on track will tell you, transitions work when you give yourself a script.
joy on the prescription pad
Around month six, my onco-psychologist wrote "joy" on her pad and underlined it twice. I rolled my eyes. She was not fazed. She told me that for the next month, I was to schedule one small, completely useless, joy-only activity per week, and I was not allowed to feel guilty about it. A swim at my local beach in Coogee. A trashy novel on the bus. A long lunch with my sister where we ordered too much wine and didn't talk about oncology once. A Saturday arvo at the footy with my nephew, where I yelled at the ref and forgot I was a patient for a full two hours.
The point, she explained, was not to chase happiness. It was to remind my nervous system that pleasure was still allowed, that life still contained things worth showing up for, that my brain could be trained out of constant low-grade threat detection. Joy, on her prescription pad, was clinical. It was a dose, taken regularly, with possible side effects of grinning like an idiot in the cereal aisle at Coles. I now treat it as carefully as the little white tablets I take with brekkie.
the sentence I taped to the fridge
The thing she said that finally stuck was this: "You're not behind, you're just on a different clock." I have it on a Post-it on the bathroom mirror, and on a screensaver my husband made me, and on a tote bag I treated myself to from the My Fabulous Boobies shop after my last round of infusions. The sentence is small and a bit daggy and it has done more heavy lifting than any of the well-meaning aphorisms on the Cancer Council pamphlets.
I'm still on a different clock. I still forget that, often. I compare my hair regrowth to strangers in the lift. I worry about the gap fee for the next MRI. I check my phone after every follow-up. But when the comparison spiral starts, I hear her voice, and I reset. Different clock, not behind. Different clock, not behind. Repeat as needed, usually in a Coles car park, usually with slightly wet eyes.
If anything here has landed for you, take it as a small companion for the week. The onco-psychologist taught me that survivorship is mostly made up of tiny, unglamorous decisions done gently. Drink the water. Take the pill. Say the no. Book the joy. Tape the sentence somewhere you'll see it. And when the next person tells you their aunt bounced back, you can smile politely and think about your own slow, weird, stubbornly Australian version of getting through.