Agony of illness is wrecking my life

You may have now had the operation — if so, this is the time when you most need advice, and mine will be the same as if you were about to have it. Accept this strange time in your life as difficult but precious.

Try to imagine it as an old-fashioned walled garden, with a tall door in the wall at each end.

You have entered by the first door, closing it carefully behind you. In this story you need to stay in that garden for a while, getting used to its winding paths, flowerbeds and blooms (hellebore at the moment).

In time you will make your way slowly to the other door, step out and enter normal life again, changed by what you have experienced.

Your task is to decide whether this will be for the better. That can only happen if you accept the ‘now’— and halt your restless anxiety long enough to appreciate the beauty of your mindful garden.

In 2003, I was in this position, with a hysterectomy ahead. I was also about to experience a catastrophic upheaval in my personal life. Everything had to be put on hold: my work and the social life I’d always enjoyed.

All horrible. So how did I cope? If I said by reading, looking peacefully out of the window and listening to music you might think that too predictable. Like you, I was always impatient; now there was no alternative to patience.

You must breathe deeply, close your eyes and allow what’s happening to take its course, one day at a time. All this I had to re-learn exactly two years ago, when I was about to have a hip replacement — and that’s why I know how hard it can be. But you do adjust.

You take those baby steps towards the far door that leads out into the rest of your life and rejoice that you no longer feel tired and scratchy because that annoying drain on your energy (fibroid, bad hip, whatever) has gone.

This process can enlighten your future, when other demands will be made on your resilience and patience. They may be far more serious. And then you will have to revisit the dream of the walled garden.