Like Kate, I do know the reduction and trepidation on the finish of chemo

Before this week, I was completely sure that the year I’ve just lived through had made me a much tougher, far more resilient person.

The four-and-a-half months of breast cancer treatment; the diagnosis that got worse with every appointment; the two near-death experiences during chemotherapy – it had surely stiffened my backbone. And yet, as I watched the Princess of Wales‘ video on Monday, I found myself welling up.

I don’t have much in common with Catherine, but what we do share, I’m convinced, is that very specific and disorientating mix of emotions you feel as you come to the end of your treatment.

There’s the sheer relief that it’s over, and at the same time the sense it’s never going to be. There is also an intense feeling of ­vulnerability that comes from the sudden untethering from hospitals and doctors — when you are released from what I always thought of as chemo ‘prison’, hopefully cancer-free but learning to live every day silently fighting the worry every twinge or ache is a recurrence.

Like Kate, Alice has experienced a ‘very specific and disorientating mix of emotions you feel as you come to the end of your treatment’

I’m not sure I’ve necessarily changed for the better. I am obviously extremely grateful to be alive, but also far more conscious of the fragility of life and the knowledge that cancer will always be a part of my story, much as I have loathed this chapter. It’s like an extra layer bubbling along beneath my normal, reasonably cheerful self, every now and then rising to the surface in a boiling hot, all-over panic.

The moment I received the recommendation that I ought to have chemotherapy, I descended into a state of shock. My innate sense of optimism vanished in an instant as I realised that there’s no such thing as justice, that every roll of the dice happens in isolation, without taking the previous ones into account.

For the month before treatment started, I was unable to function. I couldn’t eat or sleep and I felt nothing but numb anger and despair. There was no question of trying to process the situation – I just had to get through each day. It’s only been in the months since completing treatment – on February 27, not a date one forgets – that I’ve felt myself able to address the ­psychological impact.

I’d never presume to speculate on the nature of Catherine’s cancer – it’s personal and for her to reveal should she wish. But, like most of us dealt that hand, it must have felt cruelly unfair that she had the ­diagnosis at all. I certainly believe that of my cancer.

Like most of us dealt that hand, it must have felt cruelly unfair that Kate had the cancer diagnosis at all, believes our writer Alice Smellie

Pre-diagnosis, I exercised three or four times a week, ate fruit, vegetables and plenty of protein; drank far less than 14 units of alcohol a week and was a healthy weight. I was very low risk. But that’s not how cancer works.

In August last year, I went for my first mammogram aged 50 in a mobile unit in Frome, Somerset, part of the national screening programme. When I was called back for a biopsy, I was sanguine, imagining it a benign anomaly that would soon be cleared up.

When this revealed what’s known as DCIS – or stage zero cancer – I was told I needed a lumpectomy, a brief and straightforward surgery to whisk it out. It was recommended that I have five days of radiotherapy about a month later, but that, it very much seemed, would be the end of that. I was stressed, but felt I could deal with the situation.

But a week after my operation I had a phone call from my surgeon. ‘We’ve found a very small amount of invasive cancer,’ he informed me. A further phone call a couple of days later revealed it was tiny, but a type called triple-negative, a less ­common and more aggressive form which is harder to treat.

In a Zoom call with an oncologist two days later, I was informed that she recommended a four-month course of preventative chemotherapy followed by three weeks of radiotherapy. That moment was one of the worst of my life. I remember stumbling out of my study, paralysed with dread.

Four years earlier my husband had died and, as a lone parent, I now had to tell my three children, then 15, 17 and 18, that my initial promise that it was ‘a tiny amount of cancer cells, nothing to worry about’ had become something that needed to be treated far more aggressively.

I forced myself to be as breezy as possible with them, but in private I broke down at least once a day. I had a time set aside for my ‘morning cry’. A friend once caught me rocking on the floor of the sitting room, weeping that I couldn’t face chemo. I am not a stoic. But of course I got through it.

Alice Smellie wearing a cold cap in a bid to stop chemo robbing her of her hair

I had my last chemo at home. As the nurse packed up the loathed needles, the IV stand and the drug debris, I remember thinking I ought to be over the moon, but I felt cast adrift, unsure of what to do. I had three weeks of radiotherapy, which were a breeze in comparison and with no side-effects.

Then my diary was empty of the routine that the medical appointments had given me. I considered ceremoniously burning my hated record book in which all of these were detailed, but kept it ‘in case’.

As I walked out of the radiotherapy suite for the last time, I felt like a soldier leaving a war I hadn’t wanted to fight in the first place.

I had had extremely comprehensive treatment for what was a very small cancer, so my doctors are optimistic it ‘won’t bother me again’. But who knows? It’s interesting that although Catherine’s film is a celebration of the end of chemo, she is careful to say: ‘Doing what I can to stay cancer free is now my focus. Although I have finished chemotherapy, my path to healing and full recovery is long and I must continue to take each day as it comes.’

Away from the constant loop of blood tests, checks, scans and medics, every headache becomes a reason to panic and every leg cramp provokes a cold sweat. Last week – a year after my diagnosis and almost a year after surgery – I had my first post-cancer mammogram and ultrasound.

Both clear, but I didn’t sleep for 48 hours before having them. I’ve been assured this so-called ‘scanxiety’ gets better. Physically I feel fine, but some days I feel my mood plummet and have to fight the urge to curl up in a ball and wish it all away.

There is also anger. I am furious I had cancer, that I had to go through treatment, that my ­children were affected, that I am left with this undercurrent of ­concern. I know anger is a pointless emotion, but I battle to keep it in check.

Surprisingly, I’m not furious at the trauma of my chemotherapy. After my first round in October last year, my heart rate shot up and it appeared I’d suffered a collapsed lung during the insertion of my chemo port, which is where the drugs are delivered and blood taken. I felt calm, but was perplexed by the ICU nurse who stayed with me until there was a theatre slot to insert the chest drain that would reinflate my lung.

As I understand it, this was in case the collapsed lung squashed my heart to the extent she needed to perform an emergency ­procedure. After the second round two weeks later, my heart rate shot from 60 to over 165 as I lay in bed at home. I could feel it bashing against my ribs and thought I was dying. I contacted my team who told me to call an ambulance. A heart attack was suspected as I’d had a troponin leak – which occurs when heart muscle is damaged. However scans showed I was fine.

I don’t feel retrospectively ­traumatised by these events – they were nobody’s fault, and I received excellent and prompt treatment. But I am furious at the time wasted, the tedium of spending six extra nights in hospital, and resentment at not being on good form for my children, though having children is an excellent reason for continuing to put one foot in front of the other.

I endured other side-effects. Almost all my hair fell out within weeks, and I had nausea, insomnia, pain, rashes, mouth ulcers, altered taste buds and a face as round as the moon from steroids. Not everyone has such a horrible time – I think I was particularly unlucky. Seven months later, I am astonished by the body’s capacity to heal itself. Six months ago I could barely walk up the stairs; now I’m exercising almost every day. My hair has almost entirely grown back and my face is no longer moon-shaped. I say yes to everything – I will drop everything for a social occasion.

You certainly appreciate friends and family more than you did; my sister-in-law who dashed from Gloucestershire to feed the kids when I was trapped in hospital; my friends who came to stay; the dear family who hosted us for Christmas; the stream of texts and kind words that arrived daily.

If chemo was a series of poisonous drugs administered by needle directly into my veins, then those dear to me were a metaphorical sofa plump with soft cushions, ready to comfort and hold me. I am very fortunate.

Now I live more in the moment partly because I’m scared to plan ahead, and I take joy in small things – a delicious meal, time with loved ones. But I am wary of feeling happiness and fearful of the future. Cancer gives you an unpleasant insight into what can go wrong, and I have had to face the fact we all – eventually – die.

As Prince William said on ­Tuesday when asked about Kate on a visit to South Wales. ‘It’s good news, but there’s still a long way to go.’ Optimistic but not carefree. I think that applies to anyone who has reluctantly walked this road.