ANyone Elses husband not want to talk about it anymore?

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Hi All

I finished my treatment in June 2006 and after a long struggle started to feel Ok again a couple of months ago. My prognosis is good so my husband feels “We should put it all behind us and get on with life”.

The thing is he is just totally fed up with it all - he has been brill but I think they reach saturation point. The thing is that even now I Still need to talk about it and tell him that I feel I will never be “normal” again but he just changes the subject.

Anyone else have this problem with their OH and still think about BC every hour 2 years after dx? When I last saw my onc 2 weeks ago he said I was fine and he considers me “cured”. I was elated for awhile but now I just think “How does he know?”

ANyone feel the same

Love to all

Alise x

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Hi Alise
I know what you mean I have finished all chemo and rads now just on tamoxifen and awaiting news on reconstruction but I feel OH thinks everything should be back to normal. He said the other day he wanted his life back!!! our world seems to be upside down.

Do you have a close friend who you can talk to, i know we have many friends but there is only usually one or two that have stuck by you and will be willing to listen. I always feel I am boring them but I think we need to talk to get on with things.

Take care
Debbie x

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If its any comfort, girls, I’ve had BC twice now and my OH has been singularly unsympathetic. On the first occasion 17 years ago he went on a fishing trip for 3 weeks just after I got back from hospital and this time (April) he has really shown little concern. He is a retired doctor who was brilliant with his patients but useless with his family. Very odd but apparently not untypical reaction. Luckily I am a strong woman with many interests outside the house. I think this forum is fantastic and wish it had been around 17 years ago. Keep smiling and believe me there is good quality life after BC and you will stop thinking about it and find better things to do. I go to yoga classes and work out in the gym and go skiing whenever I can.

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Hi Alise

Yes, same here. I finished my treatment earlier this year and to be honest am finding it hard to re-adjust to life. I need to talk about things (I didn’t do this at all after dx & during treatment), my hubby works away all week and I only see him Sat & Sun - you can imagine how it is, me trying to blabber about all my feelings and thoughts and him saying ‘time to put this behind us and move on’…

I do think about it a lot at the moment and to be honest probably need more reassurance and support than I did during treatment, yet I am left feeling as though I am unusual and not at all thoughtful or supportive towards my hubby who has to suffer working 6 hours away all week in a stressful job whilst I stay at home looking after our 34 dogs, horses, chooks, daughter and home! Oh, I’m also told it is not good for me to be coming onto this site and others as it’s stopping me from moving on and forgetting about this whole episode of my life - as if I can do that, every time I look at myself I appear to be missing a boob!!!

Lynn x

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Alise

I was dx last Sept. I had WLE, rads and Tamoxifen. Occasionally I like to go through my bc publications just to check things. Last time I did this, I got upset. Hubbie came upstairs, saw me crying and ripped up all my reading material and threw it out! You are not alone. How can you not be reminded when you see your lymph sampling scar every morning. My op was done through nipple so that is all puckered, I keep getting skin reactions on affected breast and the skin is very dry. I have a dent from where lump was and, if I don’t do shoulder exercises, my shoulder seizes up. It’s impossible not to think of it. Don’t take his comments to heart and come on here instead

Lots of love
Debbie

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Hi everyone

Just put up a new posting about chlonidine and on that mentioned that my family think it is time to forget about it and get on with life. I was diagnosed May 2007 and had my mastectomy June 18th, removal of all lymph nodes and then followed it up with septacemia which had me back in hospital beginning of July for a week. Everyone was fantastic when diagnosed, very supportive and calm and very positive. I was fortunate that i had no lymph involvement, I had been having yearly mammos privately as a couple of family members had had the disease so i was over cautious, it paid off, I had a lobular and a ductal cancer in the same breast. I think because i was not offered chemo or radiotherapy it seemed a lesser disease to people, I think if i had walked around with a scarf on my head people would have thought it more serious. one cancer was a grade 2 oestrogen positive and invasive the other one was grade one oestrogen positive and invasive. I do appreciate that I was very fortunate to have been spared these two dreadful treatments but i still have the same chance as anyone else of it recurring sometime in the very long and distant future.

I really cant talk to my husband as he starts crying and saying he cant live without me. When he first saw my mastectomy scar he broke down in hysterics which terrified me. He later explained that it was because he felt so sorry for me and what i had been through. It didn’t help me though! I have to keep my ‘pecker’ up and try and act as if i am 100% ok with him and when i am a bit down, like today with my new crown causing me agony, (see Chlonidine thread) I just want to cry and tell him how pissed off i am with everything.

My eldest son has acted stoically throughout, “nothing to worry about, you can fight this, you are so strong, a little thing like cancer won’t stop you, you are so courageous etc.”, takes some living up to i can tell you!

My beautiful daughter aged 23 could not accept or talk about the whole thing, it was all just too much for her, she shut down when cancer was mentioned and only now 4 months on admits she just couldn’t handle the fear she felt that i might die.

As for my best friend of 25 years, we share every aspect of each others lives, apart from BC. She lost her sister to it 13 years ago, to her BC is a death sentence. When i gently told her i had the disease too she literally hit the deck and went hysterical. She was the last one to see my scar, i forced her into it on holiday in Lanzarote, i just could not cover it up anymore in nightclothes. She had refused to look at it in all those 4 months as to see it would make it real and she did not want to accept that i had had the diesease that had killed her sister all those years ago. She can talk about it a bit but can’t share my fears or anxieties.

So for all of you out there you are not alone in finding it hard with your families wanting to put the past to bed. I just remember my cousin Jean who had a very aggresive BC 9 years ago telling me before my operation that now 9 years on she hardly every thinks of BC and only does when it is time for her 3 yearly mammo.

Love to everyone out there, we are not alone if we have each other!

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hi there,
I’m still in the throes of treatment, so am not yet where you ladies are, but I hope you don’t mind me commenting.

In a way this disease is like a bereavement, whether we have a lumpectomy or bi lateral mastectomy - we lose something, a part of us. We also lose many of our hopes and dreams and we face the fact that we are mortal. But, like a bereavement, the loss does get easier to cope with, the scars are still there, but the pain is less, just like Suzzanne’s cousin Jean, who only thinks of her BC when the mammogram reminder comes through.

If you like to picture tings, imagine the BC as a table tennis ball in an egg cup - and it fills the egg cup completely. This is when you discover that you have cancer, and it takes over all your life. As the treatment goes on the egg cup is replaced by bigger and bigger glasses - by the time the treatment ends the ball is bobbing around in a tumbler!
The ball remains the same size, it isn’t less, just there is space around it for other things in your life.
Now people outside the tumbler see you doing things and going places and they think it is all over, and for them, it is. But for you it isn’t. And sometimes the ball crashes against the sides of the glass and it seems like it is all there is. But, it does bob back into the middle again.
As time goes on the glass continues to get bigger and bigger - i think that maybe Jean’s ball is in the bath now! Still there, but a very small part of her life. And, in time, your ball will also be bobbing around a bath, or even an olympic swimming pool! You can’t hurry it though, and everyone gets there at a different speed. Sometimes it may seem someone else is “doing better” than you, but, their ball may have been smaller to begin with.

Take it easy and don’t be hard on yourselves

hugs

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I love quisie’s analogy, how brilliant, I think we do need to focus on the positive and my cousin Jean was a very positive person although she lost her mother to BC 25 years previously. How she managed i don’t know but after her radiotherapy and chemo she scooted off to work! Jean is a very practical and caring person and although everyone in the family was terrified for her she just brushed the concerns away and just carried on life as normal, how she did it i have no idea. She did not have the internet or the resources we have now so she never looked up anything or researched into it at all, she was fortunate that she was under the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading and put her trust in them completely. 11 out of 15 nodes had traces and it was as i said aggressive grade 3. Jean has not had a recurrence of the disease and now is of the same risk as anyone who has not had the disease. How lovely it is to hear about people like her who apart from a bit of numbness in her arm have truly got their lives back and live life to the full. When i feel a bit low and sorry for myself I think of Jean and how wonderful her life is and feel hope again and positivity once more.

I know i made the mistake of researching too much and went on some very dubious sites which made me petrified, really such a stupid thing to do. My son at one point was going to take the computer off me if i continued to do so.
I am careful now what i read and do not read anything that sounds the slightest bit negative, I am trying to use a switch off mechanism with myself, not easy but the alternative is frightening myself to death, which is pointless and so time consuming.

I met a lovely couple in Lanzarote, i had problems adjusting my sunbed and asked the gentleman if he could help as i had recently had breast surgery. He told me to speak to his wife as she had had the same. This couple were fantastic, she had had BC 9 1/2 years previously, she was on Tamoxifen for 5 years. She found a tiny lump after coming off and decided herself to have a mastectomy and now is on Arimidex. They were living their lives to the full and travelling and not saving for their old age, they were spending what money they had on enjoying their lives. As they said life is for living not planing too far ahead, they were both in their late 40’s a good deal younger than me at 54. She was vibrant attractive and total fun and the reconstruction she had had was amazing, i could not tell which breast had been done. Made me think perhaps one day in the future i might have one myself.

Quisie is right though we do try to hurry things as we are all desperate to get ‘our lives back’, sometimes the pressure from our families is tremendous, they do not mean to be unkind but they also want you back to the way you were before BC. My best friend says i am still the same Suzy, but i know i am not, not inside me anyway, i am more conscious of my own mortality, i know i am not invincible as i thought i was 10 years ago. I am more cautious about doing things that might risk my safety, I always cross at crossings now, I am a more cautious driver on the very few occasions i have tried to drive. My life is slowly getting back to normal but if i try to rush things i tend to pay for it the next day by feeling off for the day. When i have good days i feel wonderful and life and all around me is exciting and i rush around with great enthusiasm embarrassing everything that comes in my path. If i feel really well i am like a women possessed trying to squeeze enjoyment out of every second and scared to waste a moment of it. I am sure i will slow down in time but this is all so new to me, i never realised before what great fun life can be when you feel well, how did i not realise that feeling well is such a blessing. When i contracted my septicemia my life was very black i lost interest and enthusiasm for everything, just sitting in a chair and feeling so terribly ill, could not read, eat, watch tv, talk to anyone, that was hellish. I came through it though and that was truly the worst time i have ever had. I think my ball is bouncing a bit now and perhaps is in a large vase!

Love to everyone