Life Between Appointments
Editorial essays on daily life with chronic illness: body, clothes, work, sleep, relationships.
This site distinguishes lived experience from medical documentation.Deze site onderscheidt geleefde ervaring van medische documentatie.
Open what you need. Leave the rest closed.Open wat je nodig hebt. Laat de rest dicht.
1 Body Living in a body that no longer feels fully predictable.
What happened
After cancer surgery there were immediate changes: pain, restricted lifting, a catheter, altered bladder signals, and a long physical recovery. Years later, the right leg added another layer: swelling, pitting, heat, pressure, heaviness, changing ankle shape, altered shoe fit, and during worse periods pins and needles or numbness.
What I know now
I read my body continuously: asymmetry, pitting, shoe pressure, heaviness, heat, sensation changes, and how the leg responds to travel, sitting, and compression.
What I wish someone had told me
Monitoring your body is not the same as being afraid of it. The aim is pattern recognition.
2 Clothes How illness changes what you wear and why.
What happened
Clothing stopped being purely aesthetic. Shoes became an early measurement tool because swelling could determine whether the right one went on at all. Compression garments became part of dressing.
What I know now
A lace ridge, a tight shoe, or a compression imprint can be evidence that the body has changed that day.
Public-safe wording
Some mornings I choose clothes by who I am. Other mornings the leg chooses first.
3 Movement Walking, exercise, and physical capacity.
What happened
Walking became part of recovery after surgery and later part of how I understood lymphatic symptoms. During significant swelling, standing could make the ankle pulse, gait could feel wrong, and movement became negotiation rather than freedom.
What I know now
Helpful movement and forced performance are not the same thing.
Public-safe wording
Movement helps me, but movement is not a test of character. Some days walking restores capacity. Some days stopping protects it.
4 Work Showing up professionally while managing symptoms.
What happened
A normal workday often depended on hiding the body cost. In March 2026, severe swelling collided directly with a required workday; I was still at the laptop wondering if I could push through.
What I know now
Output can conceal depletion. Professional capability and physical capacity are different variables.
Public-safe wording
I became very good at producing normal work from a body having a very different day.
5 Sleep Disrupted rest and what helps.
What happened
The clearest sleep disruption came while waiting for postoperative pathology. Sleep came in strips, and I woke repeatedly reaching for the phone.
What I know now
Waiting itself was physically active. Uncertainty entered sleep, breathing, and attention.
Public-safe wording
Some of the hardest nights were not nights of pain. They were nights of waiting for the phone to ring.
6 Confidence Rebuilding self-assurance after illness.
What happened
Illness complicated the version of confidence built around competence. I could appear composed while medically restricted.
What I know now
Confidence is not convincing everyone that I am fine. It is being accurate about what I can and cannot do.
Public-safe wording
I used to think resilience meant looking untouched. Now I think it means responding accurately to what is true.
7 Relationships How illness reshapes closeness and distance.
What happened
Illness clarified the difference between presence and advice. The most useful help was practical: someone accompanying me, asking for documentation when I could not, bringing food, walking with me, or not demanding performance.
What I know now
The best support did not require a persuasive case.
Public-safe wording
The help I remember most was rarely dramatic. It was the person who came, carried a page, brought food, walked beside me, or let me stop explaining.
8 Ambition Holding onto goals while managing a chronic condition.
What happened
Cancer arrived during a major career opportunity. I disclosed the surgery date and still pursued the role.
What I know now
Ambition survived, but on different terms. I no longer want ambition that requires pretending the body has no claim on the calendar.
Public-safe wording
I did not stop wanting a future. I stopped believing the future was only valid if I reached it without interruption.
9 Travel Planning trips around treatment and symptoms.
What happened
Travel now includes lymphoedema planning. Compression wraps, sitting time, movement, recovery margin, and post-flight response all became part of the itinerary.
What I know now
Arrival does not mean the physical effects of the journey have ended.
To verify
The manuscripts do not currently provide reliable quantitative 24–48 hour post-flight circumference changes; those figures remain To Verify.
Public-safe wording
Long-haul travel now starts before the airport and ends after the suitcase is unpacked.
10 Fear Living alongside uncertainty without being ruled by it.
What happened
Fear changed form over time: fear of cancer, infertility, surgery, pathology waiting, thrombosis during acute swelling, and fear that illness would alter professional status or access.
What I know now
Useful caution leads to action: call, document, ask, stop, seek assessment. A fear spiral keeps asking the same question without new information.
Boundary
Mental-health wording here remains phenomenological; no psychiatric diagnosis labels are used without supporting records.
Public-safe wording
Fear became most useful when I could turn it into a question, a call, a photograph, a measurement, or a boundary.
11 Hope What keeps momentum going.
What happened
Hope was rarely a slogan. After surgery, it looked like walking, eating, sleeping, rebuilding strength, and pathology that did not lead to chemotherapy or radiation at that time.
What I know now
Practical hope is attached to the next possible action, not certainty about the ending.
Public-safe wording
Hope became less about getting my old life back and more about building a life my current body can actually inhabit.
12 Bureaucracy Navigating forms, referrals, and administrative friction.
What happened
Bureaucracy repeatedly became part of illness itself: referrals, coverage mismatches, phone calls without references, portals, occupational-health classifications, canceled appointments, and invoice tracking.
What I know now
Referral, coverage, treatment, documentation, and access are separate systems.
What I wish someone had told me
Keep your own record from the first abnormal result.
Public-safe wording
Being sick created a second job: making sure the systems around my illness agreed on what had happened.