Until now, nobody ever imagined that like survivors of war or natural disaster, cancer survivors may need help to recover from the trauma. "Lots of patients say that the time when they feel most abandoned , most lost, is when the treatment has ceased. They often talk about being given a pat on the head and told 'You're done, you're cured'... And there's a strong sense of abandonment", says Dr Steward Dunn, Dept Psychological Medicine, Sydney University.

The end of successful treatment isn't the end of the story. Many survivors feel that their experience of cancer sets them apart from the people around them and the life they had before. While each case is different, there is a common thread to survivors' stories. Many find their relationships falling apart. Some feel enormous guilt for having survived, while others did not. They may live in constant fear of recurrence. On top of this survivors are still saddled with stigma and may face discrimination in the workplace. "There are a lot of survivors out there who are leading extraordinarily rich, maybe greatly enriched lives, beyond what they were before. But there are also a large number of survivors out there who are leading lives that are full of stress", says Professor Miles Little.

We meet two couples and three single young women - cancer survivors and their loved ones. Jan and Ian explain how their long and once stable marriage all but fell apart after Jane contracted breast and bowel cancer. "The thought that my marriage wasn't going to survive after 30 years of a harmonious loving relationship was just so wounding", says Jane. Her husband Ian tells of feeling rejected and left out in the cold. "What gets thrown at you is that; 'It's alright for you but you just don't understand what I've been through'. You feel like you're some kind of monster... something crude and cruel..." The saddest thing for Jane and Ian was that their marriage was brought to the brink by an issue that was not of their making. They were split asunder, not by Jane's cancer, but by the crisis that followed in the wake of her survival.

John and Helen are a young couple trying to rebuild their relationship after John, previously an action man and a wilderness expedition guide, survived acute leukaemia. He is now less physically adventurous and is trying to carve out a new role in life. Helen must accept that the man of her dreams has changed irrevocably. "He's a different kind of person to the person I met. And I don't know what he's going to do with his life..". Helen needed counselling to help her adjust to the drastic change in John during and after his illness. "At one stage, I literally didn't recognise him. I thought... could he be the same person inside this incredibly withered frame that he had?"

One researcher describes the plight of survivors' partners - people like Ian and Helen : "Your worst fear is that they can be taken from you. So, if the patient says, 'Well I'm inevitably changed because of having this cancer, then your worst fears have been realised... You can never have them back as they were." Despite statistics showing that up to one in three people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, this film shows the journey from disease to recovery as a profoundly lonely experience.

Produced by ABC Australia