[♫] [Streaming Well]
[Judy] I was a head teacher, and I was going to have to have some time off,
not a great deal, but either you're not going to tell anyone,
in which case the question is: Where is she?
Or you're going to tell everyone and you're going to say,
Well, it's a 50/50 situation.
If I come through, it's very encouraging because it shows things are working.
And if it isn't, you're not going to be dreadfully surprised and upset
that you didn't know there was something wrong.
But managing time, if you're a working woman with breast cancer,
is quite difficult because of the tiredness and the radiotherapy and the treatment.
And I think for many women that's one of the biggest multitasking issues
of how you deal with breast cancer.
Not just family and friends, but your working situation and how important it is
for you, for your own self-image, if you need to go on working through the treatment,
and I don't know how people have coped with that.
>>I only had to have radiotherapy, but I was very--it wasn't really so physical,
but I found that my concentration was very bad and I felt very tired.
So I really couldn't work more than about 3 hours a day.
And a kind of miracle happened because I am a picture restorer,
and I'd been to see probably the best picture I shall ever work on about 6 months before.
And I hadn't heard anything from the owner, and he suddenly rang up
just when I had been diagnosed, and I said, "I'm terribly sorry. I can't do this."
And he said, "It doesn't matter. I'll wait."
And that was a tremendous carrot for me to get up and get going.
I realized how important my--my working life was to me
and how much I relied on it and what a shape it gave to my life.
And I don't think I'd really quite understood that before.
it's interesting that for some people the most important thing
is that, actually, they give up work.
They stop working, and they allow themselves the space and the time
to learn to be and be with themselves and find themselves in another way.
And that actually moving out of work and letting work go can be the most difficult thing
but actually the most rewarding thing.
[Streaming Well - Breast Cancer Haven]