Once radiation was over, I thought I'd be back to normal. My hair was growing back, of coruse it was only visible to me. But the wig was too hot for summer time, so I just went around looking like a cancer patient, which got me into a number of wonderful conversations.

The only way to describe my post-treatment mentality was that I felt bereft -- after months of being in the hands of the best doctors in the world, I was suddenly on my own. My boyfriend had split, I was so terrified that the cancer would come back I'd check myself obsessively, until I thought I actually found a lump in my other breast. It of course was nothing.