‘I needed to reclaim my sense of self’

Xenia Taliotis discovers how soothing hands can even reach those with cancer

I’m in a spa having a full body massage. You’re probably thinking “bully for you”, but the truth is having a spa therapy is a huge deal for me and the 2.5 million other people in the UK living with cancer. Last time I tried to have one was in 2013, following treatment for breast cancer. The year before I’d been among the 350,000 people in the UK to have been diagnosed with cancer. That number has since risen – 360,000 in 2015 – and will likely increase further: Cancer Research UK estimates that 50 per cent of those born after 1960 will develop the disease at some stage.

Once I’d recovered sufficiently, friends decided to spoil me with the pampering, preening and primping works at a ritzy London hotel. While I don’t subscribe to the “scarred, poisoned and burnt” view of oncology procedures, I did need to reclaim my sense of self, to be touched by someone who wasn’t a doctor and to put the treat back into treatment. I’d depersonalised my body, becoming so inured to examinations that I sometimes didn’t go behind the screen to undress: “We’ve turned you into such a patient,” said my surgeon.

I’d spent days fantasising about relaxing in a fluffy towelled cocoon of whale music and scented oils, while soothing hands turned patient into a princess, but when my therapist read my health questionnaire her face fell and her mouth mumbled apologies. The massage was out. Neck and shoulders? No. Hot stones? Sorry. Sauna? Best not. Steam? Inadvisable. Seaweed wrap? I’m afraid not. The answer remained no even after I suggested I sign a waiver. Finally, after phoning her manager (and probably the hotel’s lawyer), she offered a modified facial – a quick cleanse and 15 minutes lying in the dark with cotton pads over my eyes – but at least I got the whale music.

I wish mine had been an isolated experience, but that’s not so. In a 2016 survey for the Spa Business School, 97 per cent of salons questioned said they’d turn away those with cancer. This has since dropped to 70 per cent, but the groundless fear that a massage might send any remaining malignant cells racing through the body, or of litigation in the event of metastasis, persists: in October 2017, Center Parcs, Longleat, refused someone a manicure and massage because she’d had cancer.

That’s extreme, yet my brilliant oncologists, nurses and practitioners at the Macmillan Centre and charities Maggie’s and The Haven, where I had lots of complementary – and complimentary – treatment, do advise caution. This equates to avoiding massage on tumour and radiotherapy sites, avoiding saunas, steam rooms and deep tissue massage during and for some months after finishing active treatment, and taking particular care