When you’re very ill, your whole being becomes engulfed in getting better. Every ounce of energy goes into healing yourself and often this can make you insular, like there’s nothing more important in the world than you and your health. One of my chemo nurses told me that people can often become self absorbed when they have cancer – she meant this in the nicest possible way and for the record is a very caring, supportive woman. At first I was shocked and confused by this statement. But the more I started to think about it, the more I started to come out of myself and look at this from a different perspective. I realised that yes, this is happening to me. ME, me, me, me, everything in this world right now is about ME. I’ve written over 10,000 words about ME, I’ve snapped at Barry on numerous occasions for not putting ME first, I’ve spent hours talking about ME and my health, I’ve taken so many selfies of ME and my bald head that there’s no space left on my phone; every reflective surface, be it a shop window, mirror or car door I have looked in, just to look, yep you’ve guessed it, at ME. It’s like I’m the only person in the world ever to have had cancer, I’m the only human being ever to experience this disease, I’m the only one struggling. And then I kick myself, hard, back into reality. There are 2.5 million people currently living with cancer in the UK and there were 361,000 diagnoses in 2015 – that works out as about 1,000 new diagnoses every single day.

But the thing is, this isn’t me. This cancer diagnosis is not who I want to be. I haven’t chosen this, it wasn’t down to my lifestyle choices or unhealthy habits, I had no control over it. And so I have become obsessed with myself because I’m terrified that I am losing myself. My real self. My core. My soul. The person I have forged an identity with for the last 29 years. All the things I have done, consciously or unconsciously, that make me me are slowly starting to fade away from my whole. There is a disconnect, a blurring of my true self. The cancer cells are eating up my body and slowly devouring my soul.

Suddenly, for the first time in my life, my freedom has been compromised. This makes me vulnerable. The vulnerability seeps from every crevice of my body, shapes and personifies itself in various forms. I have reverted back to a childlike state: Ariane circa 1990. I speak in a baby voice. No longer is my voice loud and engaging, but meek and timid. My tongue is hiding somewhere at the back of my throat and for the first time in my adult life people struggle to hear what I say. Confidence and independence? Bashed out of me. I can't go anywhere on my own or be anywhere on my own. In the last four months I can count the number of times I have been on my own on one hand. Female sassiness and sexiness? Disappeared. I don’t want to have sex, at all. And then there’s the lack of hair, which makes me look like a duckling, an ugly one at that, or a big, BIG baby. One night I even wet the bed, like a frightened child.