Before my hysterectomy, I was fit and active. I’d been exercising regularly—yoga, running, hillwalking—since my late teens. I even had visible stomach muscles.

Just shy of a month from my cancer diagnosis, I was assigned a slot for the operation: a state-of-the-art robotically assisted total hysterectomy. A friend who works in hospitals advised treating the process as a long-haul flight: pack snacks, earplugs and eye mask, and prepare to be bored. Very bored.

You think you’re fine and healthy, going on 36km bike rides, lifting weights, eating broccoli, going to ballet class, in such good shape for a 55-year-old woman, and then, suddenly, you’re not.

In my late thirties, I had the romantic aspiration that on my fortieth birthday, my soulmate would take me to Venice, where I had not yet been.