Olubukola Ayodele, Breast Cancer Lead at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Over the weekend, I watched the series RIPPLE on NETFLIX. And something I’ve always known, but perhaps never named clearly enough, landed hard.
Cancer diagnosis is a trauma.
As an oncologist, I often ask my patients what they remember about the moment they were told they had cancer.
Many tell me the same thing.
‘I tuned out.’
‘My life flashed before my eyes.’
‘All I could think about was death.’
That moment is rarely experienced as a medical consultation. It is experienced as trauma.
Yet we almost never talk about it that way.
Cancer is not just any diagnosis. It is not just another long-term condition to be managed.
A cancer diagnosis changes everything.
It changes how you see your body and your future.
It reshapes relationships, work, finances, identity, and emotional safety.
It alters the direction of people’s lives in ways that don’t show up on scans, blood tests, or clinic letters.
Even when cancer is caught early.
Even when treatment goes well.
Even when someone is told they are ‘all clear.’
You never return to who you were before.
Many people live with ongoing fear of recurrence, hyper-vigilance to bodily symptoms, or a quiet grief for the life they assumed was guaranteed. These experiences are often minimised because, clinically, things look reassuring.
But trauma does not resolve simply because treatment ends.
If we truly recognised cancer diagnosis as a traumatic event, it would change how we break bad news, how we pace information, how we communicate uncertainty, and how we support people long after active treatment finishes (or not, as we have to think about people with metastatic disease).
Trauma-informed cancer care is not about being less honest or less hopeful.
It is about being intentional, compassionate, and human when delivering life-altering news.
For many patients, the day they were told they had cancer becomes a permanent dividing line in their life.
And we should care about that.”
More posts featuring Olubukola Ayodele.