Having been through the experience, sometimes it’s quite difficult to get on with life afterwards. For a start your perspective has changed and all sorts of things, I think I’m probably more laid back than I was, but there are other hurdles to get over. it’s almost as if you’re a leper. it’s very difficult to get insurance. I know the first time we tried to go on holiday after my treatment, they offered insurance to my husband who’d not long been in hospital for three days, for £17, but because I’d had cancer two years previously, they wanted a premium of £77 for me. And you almost feel as if people aren’t going to give you a chance.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Nobody will insure me, so, you know, I can’t get house insurance, you know, for mortgages and things, which used to be, you used to have to. I don’t think you have to so much now but, so again, lucky for me because I had a partner and he was prepared to take it all on, that was fine, but if I didn’t have someone that was prepared to do that I would have had to have either not got a mortgage or I’d have had to have gone somewhere that was prepared to take me without insurance. Because I’ve now, especially now it’s three times, I’m now, I think after two times and after about ten or fifteen years I most probably just about, but now I’ve had it three times I’m most probably totally uninsurable. So, yeah, that has made a big difference, but that’s usually for anything money related.

Things like car insurance is fine. Things like, what was the other one, as I was saying before, if you go somewhere, like, for beauty treatments and stuff, they want you to either sign a disclaimer or they won’t even take you, so there are things like that. There was another one recently I went for. Oh, health insurance. Obviously, they won’t touch you with anything to do with cancer related, but if I’ve got a broken leg I’d be fine, but I don’t know, anything else. So yeah, it does mean that if anything does happen I have to rely on the NHS, the State or my job to back me up with regard to pay. So you do have to think about that.

I get Disability Living Allowance, I think that’s because, I don’t know whether all cancer is, but certain cancers I think may be because it’s, I’m supposed to be terminally ill, and I think maybe it’s that you’re sort of, it’s caused special circumstances, so you qualify. And that Macmillan nurse that I told you about, she’s sort of within, oh before I’d ever started my treatment, when I was still having my tests, she sorted all my financial things out and everything, you know. Because I think that is a thing when you’ve always worked and you suddenly stop working, and you’ve no idea when you’re going to be going back, you know, you just think, oh well, how am I going to manage without my wage, and all this stuff, because I think you tend to live up to your incomes, don’t you, type thing? But as I say, she was wonderful and she sorted it. And I’ve got it ever since; I think you get it for life.

Yes, do you mind me asking how much it is a week?

Well it is, I think I get the highest thing, and I think it’s about £360 a month, but I have a car, for the last two years we’ve had a car from it, so they take, I think it costs £150, so I think I get about £220, something like that a month now because we have the car. So
Who organises the car, is that a government thing or charity?

Yes the Motability.

Mobility Allowance?

Mobility yeah.

Is that a government?

I think so, yeah, I think it must be.

Oh that’s good.

Yeah so it’s very, very good, you know, you get a list, you can choose different cars. So it was the only way we’d ever have a new car, so when [my husband] was 65 I just said, "Would you like to do that, you know, we can manage can’t we?" So sometimes you think, oh we could do with £150 a month, but there again it’s nice, isn’t it, to have a new car. And, you know, they, I mean all you have to do is put petrol in, because they pay for the insurance and everything, so
Oh that’s good.

You know, they pay for the servicing of it and everything, so it’s very good. But yes, now whether all cancers get that, people with cancer get that I don’t know but, yeah, I’ve had it and it does say you get it for life. Because I know sometimes, you know, when you park in a, I have like a, well it’s a blue badge now, isn’t it, and you park sometimes at a shopping supermarket in a disabled area, you know, people see you get out and they think, they look at you as if to say, well there’s nowt wrong with her, you know. But I mean, you know, I once said that to [my husband], "I feel awful, you know, people look", he goes, "Look, they wouldn’t want what you’ve had, would they, so don’t worry about it". But yes, it’s nice to be able to park at the front of shops. So, as I say, there’s a lot of advantages, isn’t there, in these things.

When I had to actually give up work, well, in fact I decided to retire on health grounds, that was a little bit of a worry. So I investigated Incapacity Benefit. I thought, Well, there’s no point in wondering if I was entitled to it. I’ll just do it. Luckily, I was entitled to it, so that took over from my part-time salary, which was probably about half of what I was was earning. The firm I worked for were quite generous paying holidays and things like that.

That was okay for the start because, again the work that my husband was doing was coming in quite well, so it wasn’t too much of a problem. When the Incapacity, when I was sixty the Incapacity Benefit stopped but then I got my pension. So again, things weren’t too bad. We were still running two cars, although every time we sort of had to get tax and stuff like that we kept thinking, No, we can’t. But to cut a long story short we ended up lending the car out to my daughter, so it was being used, so that was all right.

By that time finances were getting a bit tight because my husband’s work is in the building trade and that was slowing up, basically. So that was a worry and it, I’ve never really got over not being able to earn. I felt very guilty about not earning. I felt quite useless when I had my good days, that I should be out working. But unfortunately I never knew when my good days and bad days were. So that’s quite difficult to cope with. You know, I hummed and hahhed about going out and doing a few days here, a few days there, you know, in sort of like a shop or something, but then the next week I’d start feeling tired, this was before treatment obviously. So I sort of wore myself out in the end, sort of being on this constant roller coaster of’ shall I work, can’t I, why can’t I? So in the end you have to accept it.

Again, finances were tight but not ridiculous. We still managed to pay the bills, have holidays, you know, go out on trips, do the things we normally do. It’s not good at the moment because the building trade and the housing market, which is what obviously my husband’s concerned with, is not good at the moment. And even though I might be in remission for the next four years, I just can’t see me going back to work.