Gently Does It

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Health: breast cancer & chronic fatigue

My next home will have dark green shutters
Shutters that lie against sun bleached terracotta painted walls. It'll sit amongst other apricot and pistachio green buildings, a stones throw from a…
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Harriet Mason
19
Feeling at home in my body
Is one of the reasons I’ve struggled to feel at home - not just here in Yorkshire but from my twenties onwards - because I haven’t felt at home in my…
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Harriet Mason
Takeaway cups of tea, treatment plans and telling the children I have cancer
A week after my mammogram and ultrasound my surgeon confirms my breast cancer diagnosis, we discuss treatment plans and we tell the children.
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Harriet Mason
5
Veins
Treatment begins with a PICC line insertion and first round chemotherapy and I realise how woefully ill prepared for what I'm about to go through…
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Harriet Mason
2
Have the children forgiven you yet?
This is where I tell the story of the morning I was diagnosed with breast cancer and start to explore the years and events leading up to this point.
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Harriet Mason
The sucker punch of a cancer diagnosis
Or, 'FFS, you're kidding me,' as my then 15-year old put it.
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Harriet Mason
Navigating life after breast cancer
Written two years after finishing breast cancer treatment, a period where I slid from coping to just about functioning.
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Harriet Mason
1
© 2025 Harriet Mason
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