Hi Brooktop
I hope you are managing these days much better than you were earlier last year. I am still in the relatively early stages myself of dealing with this inconvenience to bioth our lives.
4 weeks before our wedding my, now, wife was diagnosed with grade 2 stage 1 BC. it was HER-2 negative and hormone positive, so out of a bad lot it could have been worse. The prognosis for treatment was only radiotherapy and Tamoxifin. Her first reaction was about the delay of starting a family (we are both 35 years old), my reaction was I am going to lose her and then the family issue kicked in after I rationalised the survivability issue ( athought not too far after losing 4 friends to cancer, one to BC). We were told that the Tam would be for a minimum of 2 years and no kids within that period. She would be 37/38 before we could even consider children. This blew both of us away. But she is Scottish and therefore a natural half empty glass take on situations, where-as I saw the advantage of spending the first 2 years of our marraige together being able to do what we wanted to do.
She was determined to go ahead with the wedding and put the surgery off until the week after. Having just moved cities to be with her, bought our first house together and just moved in and me starting a new career and also planning a wedding, I was already on a height. She is a difficult girl to fathom and is A-grade at stone walling emotions (she is not a teary cry at films type at all). She finds it hard to deal with and talk about emotions, whereas I am completely the opposite. As you can imagine the run up to the wedding was a stressful and emotional day as we told all the guests prior to it so that no-one would find out during the wedding and it then spoil the day. But we made the most if it and for a few hours we forgot about the whole thing. We managed a three day spa break in the lakes, but it was difficult to relax.
Prior to all this I cried a huge amount in private, sonething i haven’t done for a long time. This all seemed so unfair. After 5 years we were finally getting our lives together sorted out and ready to take the plunge into family life etc. I went through the anger, denial, eotional wreck etc. This is so unfair. Could it get any worse?
She went in 5 days after the wedding for a lumpectomy and sentinel node removal. After the op she became allergic to what we thought were the painkillers and anti-inflammitory drugs. She had a burning bright red rash that lasted a week and included a rushed trip to A&E when the agony became too much for her to bear. 12 days after the op we went in for the results, she was healing well and the lump had good clear margins then WHAM !!! 2 out of the 3 nodes removed showed cancer deposits and now she had to go in again for the full lymph node clearance and chemo and rads was the only option. Our rads only treatment snowballed into seriously pushing back the time we could consider starting a family, notwithstanding that this BC was even more serious than first thought. The following day we began IVF treatment to start the process for freezing embryos, as the chemo might well destroy her fertility (another punch to the stomach). Xmas and NY were a blur and she was in for the op on the 7th Jan. Immediatley she reacted to the GA or antibiotics and went rashlike and bright red again, despite the efforts of the surgeons changing her post op meds. So now she has to go for allergy testing on top of an egg harvesting operation and before she begins chemo…We await the results from the second op this wednesday and praying that the rest of the nodes are clear.
Now the point of this diatribe is that as you can see my wife has had a rough time of it already, and the only medical procedure I have been involved in was at the fertility treatment (details not to be shared!!! :-))I do not cope well with seeing other people in pain and it is killing me to see her go through all this and the complications on top. She is so strong and gives a could poker face when things are troubling her, so that i feel i have to match that so i can be strong for her, even though she is hurting inside. I deal with that by taking control of everything I can, and this is the error. She also likes to be in control too and this weekend we had a chat about giving her her independance back with the things she can do. And i made her promise that if she needs to she needs to give up her pride for a bit and let me help her if she is struggling. This is so hard for me as it means i am more on the side lines, however, just being there as a safty net and being 100% reliable in that regard it just what she wants and appreciates.
I have also spoken lots with the BC nurses and asked lots of questions and been proactive by pushing the doctors into bringing allergy tests forwards and keeping the fertility dept upto date whilst my wife was in hospital recovering from surgery, so they can be proactive rather than be reactive.
By the way being there as a punch bag is a tough place to be. She is scared, worried, angry, frustrated and on top of that she is a bag of raging hormones due to the fertility drugs. So to be able to take it without fighting back is a test of patience, understanding and your love. A battle i have come close to losing on numerous occasions. I have found an out of the way tree in the local country park that is the subject of my shouting, anger and ranting. You shoudl try it it is very theraputic. Getting fit again is another focus. If I am fit i am healthy and less likely to pass on something when her immune systemis down. It gives me time in the fresh air and later this year i hope to be running in a mountain marathon raising money for breast cancer care and Maggies. That way I feel like I am putting back something into the system, a worthy cause don’t you think?
We also keep a diary. She doesn’t open up very well face-face and I feel that I cannot vent all my emotions in a one way stream, so everyday we write down how we are feeling from physical symptoms (so we can possibly see a pattern and predict/plan our activities around them) to our concerns, rants and general mental balance. Very useful when you realise that something happened which seemed irrational at the time, but had a good reason.
I also have friends who have been through cancer treatment and give me their side of the story, but I also have friends who have been on our side of the fence and can advise or just be an ear.
It is hard to release the build up of pressure but occupying your time with positive things and achievable goals is the way ahead for me at least. Eg, my Shed project is the first step to getting the garden sorted ready for turfing and the raised herb garden to be built. There is a relatively flexible time line but the main goal is to have it done so that when the weather gets more pleasant my wife can tend to the herb garden she wants thereby giving her something to do and we can have grass to lie out on and read our books. If I fail to achieve the building of the garden she cannot do those things so i am motivated and have something occupy my mind with.
Sorry for the novel but hope some of this helps you know that there is a way for coping and you are not alone in this boat!!!
All the best
Rich
