Back to work after cancer: Maria's rocky road

Just a few years ago, Maria's (name changed by the editor) life was quite ordinary. At the time, she was working in the care sector and had been living under the same roof as her partner for some time. They started a family together.

After giving birth, Maria, like many other women, went to physiotherapy for pelvic floor training. But when her therapist pointed out to her that her pelvis was misaligned and advised her to see an osteopath, her life took a completely different course.

Because two stages later, Maria finds herself in hospital. A CT scan was to reveal the true cause of the pain that Maria had always had in one leg, but which she thought nothing more of. "They discovered that it was bone cancer, that there was a tumour in the bone." A shock diagnosis for the mother of a then six-month-old baby, which completely changed her life.

Shock diagnosis and hope

Analyses at home and abroad followed, then the first chemotherapy. She endured three treatments before reaching her limit. "The tumour hadn't changed and the chemotherapy made me feel very bad. […] I probably wouldn't have survived another one, " she says in a composed voice. The doctors then tried a surgical procedure. Part of the bone was removed. She had to get used to the new situation for several months. "Basically, I had to learn how to walk again, " says Maria. But she overcomes this hurdle too.

Not quite a year after the cancer diagnosis, "I was ready to go back to work". Progressive work for therapeutic reasons, as the instrument is officially called, allows her to do this at her own pace. "I usually started at eight o'clock and saw how it went. If I realised after three or four hours that the pain was getting too bad, I could go home again." At this point, however, she is confident that she will be able to carry out her work normally again, albeit with adjustments. But her story was to take another turn.