Riding the Waves: Panic, Recovery and the Road to Feeling Better

Cancer teaches you many things about your body that you never knew. It takes away illusions about control, about what really matters, about what your body is for. But nothing prepared me for what happened after my second operation- the moment when my mind and body seemed to betray me completely, just when I thought I was getting stronger. 

Following my post-surgery appointment at St. Georges, I remember the race against time, driving home with the growing certainty that something was terribly wrong. Not wrong with my surgery, not wrong with my recovery – wrong in a way I could not name but felt in every cell of my body. I could not escape from the thought “I am going to die alone.”

Somehow, I made it, I opened my front door to our family dog Sienna and screamed for help, even though no one was home. Sometimes your body knows what it needs even when your mind has given up logic.

My legs turned to jelly. I could not trust them to hold me upright. My heart was pounding so hard I was sure it would burst. I could not keep my body straight-everything in me was collapsing, demanding that I lie down immediately. In some desperate attempt to ground myself I wanted to drink water, eat something, anything that could anchor me back to the physical world that suddenly felt so foreign. 

This was panic: Not the kind you read in textbooks or the manageable anxiety you can breathe through with the right techniques. This was panic as a full-body storm, demanding full surrender.

My neighbor, Sue, found me and called an ambulance. In the emergency room, I thought the waves would stop. Surely being in a safe place, surrounded by doctors, would calm the nervous system. But panic does not follow the rules of logic and safety. The waves kept coming. Sue kept holding my hand and keeping me talking, understanding this was something to be survived. 

This panic attack taught me sometimes resilience means knowing when to stop fighting and just ride the waves. There is no CBT technique for the moment when your nervous system decides it’s had enough. Resilience is getting yourself home when every instinct screams danger, it looks like calling for help even when you're alone, it looks like accepting a neighbor’s hand and letting them anchor you while the storm passes. 

My body is still teaching me what really matters as I age and recover. That’s the kind of

resilience I want to carry into whatever challenges aging brings. Not the kind that never falters, the kind that knows how to fall apart and come back together, how to ask for help, how panic attacks can be part of the healing. The kind that understands that your body is an ally in the fight for a better future.

Sibel