I’m demob-happy: seven of eight chemotherapies down, and for the first time I’ve chucked out the little white pills instead of dutifully swallowing them. Everybody tells you to take control of this illness, but until this day of mass tablet extermination, I’ve just done exactly what the doctors told me to, at every stage. “Taking control” seemed to me to give the cancer too much importance, make it too much part of my life.

But with only one chemo left, I’m going wild. So bye bye tablets, and - hey presto! - the constipation vanishes too. Before each treatment the doctors ask you about your symptoms from the last chemotherapy. I’ve always answered truthfully about every other symptom, but for some deep reason known only to Freud, probably - and he’s dead - every time they ask about constipation, I’ve just said airily, “No, no, that’s not been a problem at all.” In actual fact it has been a massive, huge, enormous and ever-looming difficulty. (For what it’s worth, I will pass on the fact that taking a notebook into the loo, and writing three A4 pages before exiting, does help ...)

Anyhow, what with the vanished constipation and the power-surge from the growth hormone injection - which, according to my insurance bills, costs several hundred pounds, even when I squeeze it into my stomach myself - I’m practically skipping into Centre Parcs in Longleat, where we have decamped with six of the children. It’s taken me two weeks - exactly one week longer than the time we are going to spend here - but I’ve managed to fill in the form booking everybody into the multi-spangled activities on offer, and so tonight, it’s payback time.

I am off to the spa. The girls tried it out on night one, and came back saying, “Mum/Dina, you really have to go; you will love it.” Nine different types of steam rooms,and a pool that is open under the night sky.

We’re here because I saw a list of the top 20 spas in the UK, and this place came in at number seven. I mentioned it to friends, and they looked at me as if I was mad. Turns out they were wrong. Enormous chairs to lounge on and different steam infusions in each area. And as you are lying back and breathing deeply, out of the floor there are these hoses, like giant hookahs, to switch on and douse yourself down with freezing cold water.

I didn’t pre-book myself a spa session because the day we packed I suddenly caught myself short, experiencing a sharp intake of breath, and fear in my belly. How can I go to the spa? What will I wear? I hadn’t thought about what the single-breasted wear in a swimming pool. How did I not remember? I don’t know, but it was too late to do anything about it, other than take T-shirts to wear over a swimsuit. My hair is a fuzz over my scalp now, with a little curl at the nape, so I think: will I wear a swimming cap? In a spa? But how odd will a bandanna look?

In reception I tick the medical condition box, and write “breast cancer”. I show the release letter from Dr Ostler, saying I can “partake in any activities”, and walk through to the changing rooms. Dimmed lighting, piles of towels. I feel a happy normality just walking in. I start to undress.

There was a time when I was a gym babe, perfectly happy to strip off in communal changing rooms. Again, I catch myself short. I’m really lucky that tonight, for some unexplained reason, this spa is remarkably quiet (one of the reasons it feels quite so luxurious). Even so, I suddenly realise I do not feel like struggling into a swimsuit for the first time in months, and exposing my scarred body to the gaze of strangers.

Funnily enough, the other woman whose eye I catch has very, very cropped hair. Is she post-cancer? I wonder. Anyhow, I head for a private changing room. The swimsuit looks OK in this dim light. How flat-breasted am I? I chuckle. I wrap a towelling robe round me, and decide I won’t wear a T-shirt after all. I even take off the bandanna. It’s trendy, I tell the mirror.

It’s one of the best evenings I’ve ever spent. I can see how it would be much less enjoyable on an ordinarily crowded night, but the truth remains that it is a fantastically designed area. I even go for some reflexology. What your body cries out for, post-surgery, is massage, but I can’t quite face the exposure yet. So I limit hands-on pampering to the very edges of my body.

• This column appears fortnightly.

• 30 March 2021: this article has been edited to remove some personal information.