Just wondering if any of you have had a similar experience to the one i am finding with my friend.
She was Dx about 6 wks ago, had lumpectomy and SNB, her calmness and blaise way she is taking it i am finding so difficult to know what to say and how to handle it.she found out she now needs total clearance and its grade 3 and obviously chemo. I have never met anyone before who reacts like her, brave, ‘positive’ (the word i hate).
I decided that i would tread carefully and not inundate her with info, but she doesnt seem to know anything much.
I keep sayin to her your allowed to cry or be scared, but i just get this matter of fact response.
Its upsetting as she has always been there for me and i now feel i could be there for her and there is this huge barrier. I know we all cope differently and would love to hear from anyone who has been like her when Dx with this and any advice about how i respond.
Ta
Rx
Hi Liverbird,
Don’t worry too much about your friend’s reaction. We all react in different ways. She may well be “brave” or she may well be stubbornly refusing to deal with it right now because it helps her cope. She may not want to know too much or she may in fact have devoured every bit of info on her cancer but not feel or wish to communicate it at the moment. Whatever she is doing or however she is reacting is what she needs to do right now so try not to worry about her. I too was “brave” and upbeat and “positive” after my dx on the 18th August up until the night before my mx (22nd September) and since then have been up and down and all over the place.
You don’t say what your experience of BC is but I am assuming you don’t have personal experience. If I am right then all I can say is continue to be there for her as you are. You can and will be a valuable friend to her throughout her treatment whether she ever “breaks down” in front of you or not. It might be that she can’t communicate with you because its not an experience you can relate too.
I have friends who have been there for me since my DX and I love them dearly for it but I have to say I am not as honest with them or as close to my friend who had BC 18 months ago. I feel bad because I wasn’t there for her when she was being treated in the way that she is here for me now but as she has explained I couldn’t be there for her in that way because I didn’t know what she was going through. Now that we have this shared experience I believe we will be friends for life and our friendship is deeper because of it. I also have made good friends on here who are going through the same.
My advice is to keep on trying and she’ll know you are there for her, if you can and she has no one else for support, offer to go with her to appointments, if not remembering her with a card, bottle of wine, doing the ironing, walking the dog, or whatever, will mean the world (even if she can’t express it right now).
Hope this helps, x
Liverbird, I am so sorry, I was just reading elsewhere, my post in fact on asking for help with my path report, and now realise you do have personal experience of BC so all my stuff above is tosh. It may well be that she is just coping how she knows best right now and will open up to you and your friendship in time and gain support and strength from you. Silly question but have you thought that she is worried she can’t talk to you because she thinks its too close to home for you?
I feel rather silly now for my above post as it can’t have helped at all.
x
Liverbird,
I was like your friend for several months. My mother had died just before my dx, I think I was in a state of shock or something, and it was about six months before the reality of it all hit me. Up to then I was on some sort of auto pilot. But having said that, I am not the sort of person to go around breaking down in tears - I do that in private. I remember when my mum was dying, I used to cry in the shower in the mornings, so that I could then get on with the day and manage to keep all the balls in the air - mum/children/household/work. So when reality did hit me, somewhere in the middle of chemo, I still didn’t go around breaking down in front of my friends. I think I took my rage out on my husband - poor soul.
I think some of my reaction has also been to do with protecting my children - I haven’t wanted them to know of my fears, and so the less I talk of it, the less the chance that it will get back to them. They are all teenagers, which I think is a very vulnerable age for having to deal with a parent’s mortality.
I don’t weep easily and I have still not wept over being in this situation despite being 2 years down the line (I’ve wept about other things, but not BC). I’d just lost my father 12 months prior to my diagnosis and I could hear him telling me I had to get on with things and keep going. I’m quite pragmatic and for me lying weeping on the sofa would have just sapped my fragile energy. However, my sister went into complete denial and behaved as it there was nothing going on, she would not even mention BC at all and that distressed me very, very much. Things will never be right between us again I’m afraid as she was also very selfish and just moaned about all her own problems, how she’s on her own fending for herself etc.
I think the worst bit for me was about 6 months ago, when it suddenly hit me what I had gone through and how ill I had been last year. Thankfully, I got some help and I’m now moving on with life and taking on new things.
Hi R,
I think we are all different and react to things in different ways.When I was first diagnosed last January,obviously I was upset and shocked and I still have some down days but now I take every day as it comes.I’ve done a hell of a lot of research into it and want to know everything because it’s about what’s going on in my body.Some people don’t want to know too much or haven’t got that sort of mentality for it.
As you know, I’ve got extensive secondaries and I have to live and breath that every day, but I also won’t let it take over my life.There is more to me and my personality than just cancer and it does irritate me when that is all people seem to talk to me about these days.I figure that I can either spend the time that I’ve got left being depressed and miserable or be a happy,positive person to be around.I’ve chosen the latter.
It might not have hit your friend yet that she has cancer and she may need some time to get her own head around it.I would just say,be there for her when she needs it and perhaps don’t bombard her with too much info if she doesn’t want it.
Love Alli x
Hi Liverbird!
we are all different of course and I am sure that just by being there and available you are being a big help to your friend.
It can get oppressive to have to talk about IT all the time and i really valued the friends that I could still have a laugh with when I could put troubles aside for a while.
When I am feeling good and getting on with things the last thing I want to talk about is BC. I don’t believe I have cried either, just the night my hair went really…
As far as being informed goes, I have taken it a bite at a time, if you read up on what MIGHT happen, you can completely freak yourself out, but she should be at least looking at the next stage and preparing herself I would have thought?
I hope you both find a happy balance and can help each other through this, I know it affects friends/family as well as the diagnosed.
Best of luck
Gillian
Hi Liverbird
I doubt very much that your friend isn’t aware of the potential seriousness of her situation. As she has been with your through your experience, she does probably know quite a lot about it. Who knows why people act they way they do when a bombshell has been dropped. Some seem to be really calm, and then crumple a few months later - others show their fear outwardly. She may be trying to hold it together for your sake? One thing for certain is that she will be scared as hell. In my case, I am very upbeat and happy around everyone, including my family. If you asked those closest to me whether I was bothered about having cancer, they would say not really. But secretly, I am terrified and the only people who know my true feelings are my GP and a counsellor I saw for a couple of sessions. The reason I haven’t let my feelings known is that I don’t feel it would do any good - it would just make them more upset and make me feel even worse. We all have our own ways of coping.
Hi liverbird
I was like that, juat be there when she needs you. I think as long as she knows you are there it will be fine.
I was and am very good at giving support to others but am horribly bad at receiving it from anyone . I just don’t seem to know what to do with my face when others are being sympathetic or helpful and tend towards a smile and blase brush off.
I know that this is not what is required at all but cant seem to do anything about it.
I would guess that your friend is similar and therefore would recommend that you keep on keeping on. She will appreciate it and eventually you may break down the barrier. Behave as if she is you and do the things you appreciated during treatment. She will appreciate them too -even if she doesn’t always show it.
She sounds like a great friend .
Wynn
I would say this is her coping stratagy. She has seen what you have been through and so surely she is not in denial. It sounds like she needs to handle this in her way, which is obviously very different from your own. As Ali said, just be there for her.
Love Irene
Thanks for the posts, thats exactely what i am doing ‘being their for her’
I gave her a book and some BCC info i found from one of the Living with Bc days i had been too. I also gave her a bar of whole nut choccie, got a text sayin ‘thanks for the choccie it was delicious, but book daunting’
How i wish someone who i love didnt have to go through this ‘crap’
This site is so good for sharing how we feel and its helpful when others say what they would do.
Rx
I suppose she may also be trying not to upset you. You are wonderful for her. I don’t think I could help any friend if they got diagnosed now, unless they were genuinely upset - I could help that, because I could understand that; but I couldn’t help someone who took the practical approach that we just have to get on with these things, because I wouldn’t be able to understand that - but then, that person would precisely be saying they don’t need help, wouldn’t they. Which I would find very hard to understand. But like you, I would be there, waiting for them if they did need any comfort, I suppose. That is all you can do.
Whew, what a difficult subject. When I was dx 5 yrs ago,. I didn’t know anyone with bc, except my local hairdresser in a tiny village, a year ahead of me. Initially she was very supportive, saying she would come to our apt and cut, wash my hair as I went monthly to her tiny salon that was only open a half day… Luckily for me the cold cap worked and I didn’t see her for some 6 months until my hair grew back.
She has lost her Mum, 2 grandmums and 2 sisters to bc…but is either unable or unwilling to talk to me about bc. Her attitude is like an ostrich, and the last 2 months I have gone to the local barber in our village to get my hair cut. Actually he cuts my hair better than her, and half the price. He has lost most of his family to cancer of various guises, and we laugh together. David is the stalwart of the local Peninsular Male Choir, family been in this Forgotten Corner of Cornwall for some 6 generations.and a great charity fundraiser with the Lions. Guess that says it all, how I feel about her…just so sad, but we are all so different in how we handle this disease.
Take care all,
Liz.