December 2025

Where to start when I know that it’s the start of the farewell to the KHCC community. Before anyone gets the wrong idea – I’M FINE – the status quo remains, this is not a farewell farewell message. It is just, it’s time to shut down the community and this will be my last message.

I’m not sure just yet how lengthy this message will get, so I will start with the most important points – then you really only need to read the first two-to-three paragraphs. First, thank you. Thank you to everyone here who has read my messages, reacted with emojis (once that was allowed), responded personally to me with their own detailed messages and supported me. I have truly felt the love and support here and have appreciated it more than you probably realise. Closing the community is really not about you, it’s about me.

Second, all seems to be going well on the Cancer front. I saw the oncologist today and he’s happy with how things look. My bloods look good. I continue the same path.*

*Though the path to actually-sitting-down-and-writing-after-the-hospital-visit was though, annoyingly, made longer by my locking the keys in the car AGAIN (yes, Juliana, again). Thankfully, I had my phone on me, so could taxi home, get the spare set, taxi back to the hospital and, since it was again, knew how to manually unlock the car (yes, spare set still does not have new batteries).

That’s it. The two most important points (plus the added bonus of knowing how much of an idiot I am by locking the keys in the car). You can now happily move to a different Whatsapp message and not have to fear the KHCC community notification on your screen (except for the next message as I had to break this into two). If my quick google search is correct, once I deactivate the community, the messages will remain but no more messages can be sent. I have – just in case – gone through and copied all the messages from way back to May 2023 into my notes*. So do not fear (or get too excited), they will continue to exist somewhere. Anyway, anything I write from here down is just some self-indulgent musings that you do not have to read – so to those checking out here, thank you again and Fuck Cancer 💜💪🏻

*I will obviously come back to this point… it was quite the emotional journey but also I couldn’t even manage to read all of them – how ~all~ some of you did – amazing!

When I sat down to write back in September – after the last scan – I wrote quite a long update, which ended – somewhat abruptly – with me saying that I was going to shut the community down. The shorter update that I sent (see above), gave me the space to not make the decision right off the back of all the emotions I had just gone through and had not really processed. Several months down the line, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I’ve done so well with the processing* of all the emotions but I do still think it’s time to shut down the community. As I went to sleep last night, I was quite sure it was the right decision. As I went through and saved messages, I remain quite sure it’s the right decision.

*Allowing them sit just under the surface and bubble up at any which moment and often not in moments that have anything to do with having cancer, that I think I’ve done quite well (please do note the sarcasm with the use of well; better word might be terribly).

The community really started as a way to let everyone know how I was going during/after surgery and how I was going on treatment. It quickly turned into a way for me to process or try to make sense of some of the different emotions, feelings, thoughts I had about everything going on. And with that, too many lengthy messages from me. I have tried writing in the past but always struggled to just write out my feelings. Knowing who I was writing to, really helped me write and, in turn, at times helped me to process what was going on. I’m not saying that I don’t still need (see the last * paragraph) but it slowly became harder and harder for me to write what I was actually feeling. Alongside thinking that I needed to share an update was the very strong feeling of needing the updates to be more upbeat, to be okay and if I wasn’t, that I was being too self-indulgent in the bad feelings and being burdensome. I’ll note that not one single person has ever suggested (to me) that my long winded messages about my feelings were burdensome. But here we are – my feelings are complicated, I may over think things at times.

Somewhat related (though might need to work on improving my segues), as I was going through the chat earlier, I was so touched to see all the names of people as they joined (or changed the number). On the other hand, I realised that a significant number did not really know what was in store for them when they joined and it’s really hard to “leave” a cancer community. Not at all a deciding factor to close it but after having made that decision, definitely reassured me it was the right decision. It’s one thing to be burdensome on those that ask but to impose on others doesn’t sit well with me.

I oscillate between not wanting to bother people, not wanting to talk about things, not wanting everything to be about my cancer and then frustration when things are not enough about my cancer. It’s a hardline to play if you are not me and having to deal with me (I’m sorry – in my defence, also not that easy being me). In short (or more appropriately, In a very long roundabout way), it would probably make a lot of sense for me to continue writing to try and process my feelings but maybe a different avenue or for a different audience (or most likely, it will just be the same audience in my mind but I won’t share it). If I do find another way to share my writing – I’ll let you know (well, not in this community but I’m sure at some point we’ll be in touch and I’ll tell you). I have floated the idea* of starting a blog but not sure that is my audience either.

*Not just floated, I did start one but don’t love it or the content.

In terms of updates moving forward, I’m sure I’ll continue to post on Instagram about life and the kids – which is a relatively good way to see that things are going along. And of course, you have my WhatsApp and can always reach out and ask.

If you have read this far, I will take the opportunity to just say thank you again. As I have been writing this and as I saved all the previous updates, I did read some more of them. It was emotional for me to read them but I know how much it helped me over the past 2.5 years to write them. It was also fun to read them – some really good reminders of different things I’ve done – some of them explicitly mentioned, some between the lines. It also reminded me of how far I’ve come, even if I haven’t been feeling great about how I’m dealing with things of late, I can see the ups and downs – the optimism, the struggles (also some explicitly* mentioned and some between the lines) – and can actually see that knowing you were all here helped with a lot of that optimism and that I have come a long way. So thank you.

*Also, learnt today that I cannot spell explicitly.

I will close out the community with my top five songs of 2025 (from 5th to 1st) because they are all excellent songs and not real surprises: Anxiety (Doechii) Messy (Lola Young) Good as Hell (Lizzo) Still Bad (Lizzo) Pink Pony Club (Chappell Roan)

With love to all and a continued, Fuck Cancer 💜💪🏻