Hi
I need to come on here today to get this off my chest…
Today I feel really fed up. Its 14 months since dx, and I am currently on Tamoxifen and Zoladex. Im due to have ovaries out in July, however at my pre op assesssment last week I had high blood pressure which the doctor thinks is anxiety related, and therefore have to wear a 24 hour monitor in June to prove that it is not always high, otherwise they wont operate.
I am just fed up of the school playground. I have days (like today) when I hate everyone!! I see all the other mums chatting about their “normal” lives and I think “why me?”. They dont realise how lucky they are to be “normal”. I feel so different to them and I wish my life was like theirs again. But it never will be will it? And only you on here understand this. Everyone else thinks things are back to normal now for me. Life has changed, forever.
Hi lolly,
I’ve been feeling the same as you for the past week.I’m 16 months since diagnosis and after months of feeling ok,I now feel c**p!!
I’m in so much pain at the moment-it is just unbearable!
Don’t you just hate it when you hear people moaning about stupid,trivial things? I just want to scream…GET A LIFE!
I WANT MY LIFE BACK!!!
Alli x
Hi Girls,
I’m only 2 months after dx… I’ve had the lumpectomy and node removal and now I’m 17 days after first chemo. I feel I still have it all in front of me considering it’ll be next summer before my treatment finishes and then I’ll have to start tamoxifen. My friend is 5 years post, and to be honest I never took in everything that was happening to her at the time of her treatment. She would turn up to the school gates and we would ask how she was and she’d say fine. There’s no way I had any idea of how this illness can shake a person to the core, and for my ignorance I am ashamed…
And now she is my rock!! she turns up every day to see if I am alright, she phones and texts. she mothers me no end… she knows exactly how I feel. But to me she is an inspiration! she laughs in the face of breast cancer, is full of life and lives life to the full! She has taken her life back…she didn’t wait for it to come back. she demanded it back!! told breast cancer It wasn’t going to take over! life is too short…
I am lucky, I have a mentor… woe betide I have a “feeling sorry for myself day!” she will find a reason for me not to!!
So Alli and Lolly, try to stay positive and optimistic… God we all know it’s so hard. Everybody needs to moan, even if it’s trivial…I’d love to turn the clock back too, but I’m trying to accept all that has and is happening to me. I hope to turn it all around when this is over and I have my life back!!
Stay strong Girls
Best wishes
Fiona xx
Unfortunatly Feemac I can’t turn my life around,as I have secondaries.
I have been very positive and upbeat since Jan 08 but I’m in so much pain at the moment that other peoples complaining annoys me!
Alli x
I know exactly how you feel Lolly but I never enjoyed the school playground meetings at any time anyway. It’s not fair though is it. The only way I can get through it is by not thinking about it at the moment. I am only 5 weeks past diagnosis and 3 weeks past lumpectomy and node removal - results were good - got them last week. I am sick of crying although I am getting better. People being nice sets me off though when I am seeing them for the first time and I hate getting upset in front of people who I know and probably like but that I wouldn’t regard as friends. They only know because of the grapevine not from me. I agree life has changed forever but if I think about that it upsets me so much. I guess one day at a time is the way to go.
Hope you feel better soon too and that you get some relief from your pain Alli. Again I can relate to what you are saying about people moaning about such trivial stuff. Gets you down. Especially if its being done by people who know what you are going through.
What you have said in your firt paragraph Fiona is the same for me. You have described it exactly. I was saying to my mum ysterday how ignorant I was about this disease. I didn’t even know it could spread. I thought you had an op and chemo or radiotherapy and that was it - job done. I have learnt a lot in the last few weeks. How lvely to have a friend like that who can help you. I admire people who are so positive. At the moment I can’t imagine being like that but I hope I will get there in the end.
Best Wishes to all. LooLoo x x
Hi there
I’m one year from finding my lump! I’ve had surgery, chemo & rads and am on 5 years of femara. I feel great, most of the time, and am looking forward to holidays next year etc.
BUT I still have this sense of foreboding, as though I will have a diagnosis of mets very soon. It hangs over me. I put on this brave face and act as if ‘all is well’ but I’m not sure.
Mal x
I think we will all live with it for the rest of our lives, but find ways some days to deal with it and other days life feels s**t, I’ve had a very down weekend but trying hard to pick up again!
love Debs xxx
Hi Alli,
So sorry to hear that you have secondaries, but more so that you are in such pain at the moment. Is there no more pain relief you can have? surely there must be some way of reducing your pain. I know I don’t know your circumstances, and forgive me if I appear nosey but I hate the thought of someone suffering…
No wonder you’re feeling rubbish and fed up. I can see why everybody’s complaining would be annoying,(even people trying to be optimistic!!) Appologies for butting in and not letting you have a b****y good old moan!!
Kind Thoughts
Fiona x
Hi ladies, Mal I feel the same as you. I’ve had surgery, chemo and starting rads this week, and Tamoxifen. Everyone around me is being so positive and I am too, most of the time. But it’s always there, lurking at the back of my mind and I don’t know how people bear the uncertainty. I also think that, because I had 10/18 nodes involved I feel I’m more likely to have recurrence. My onc hasn’t given figures or percentages, maybe that comes at the end of treatment but I do understand the worry. Alli, I’m so sorry that you’re in pain. I’m usually very patient and understanding but sometimes when you hear someone moad about a sore throat or sore toe you just want to explode! Not saying that their pain isn’t real or significant to them. I wish you all well and this forum is great when you are having a bad day, and when you have a good day. I find myself sharing almost everything on here - apologies for that!!! Moan and rant away, it’s better out than in. love and hugs to all, Pat x
I’m doing ok at the mo, thankfully no pain from my secondaries. What gets me isn’t just the BC. It’s the realisation that you can’t take anything in life for granted any more. Even amongst us with BC, there will be those in pain while others are pain-free, those with worries of recurrence and those plastered in secondaries, those who worry about their kids futures and those who don’t have or wish they’d had kids but can’t. Those with secondaries in their 20s and those with a primary at 75. None of it makes sense to me to be honest and I shouldn’t try.
It’s not just BC. Now when I’m in a concert or walking along a street, I wonder how many people have got major health worries and when I think of all the stats, I realise there are many ‘ill’ people somehow just getting on with their lives and appearing normal. We just don’t know…
What gets me, is that my innocence and naivety have gone (at 45, they really went a long time ago!). I try and enjoy what’s good in my life, but if I stop and think, it just makes me realise how precious and fragile life is… and that hurts.
So I try and enjoy the good but cry when I need to, if I can. Sometimes of course, no matter what I do, I just can’t lift my spirits. Yesterday, I saw a little girl with chocolate ice-cream all over her face- she was really happy. Her dad saw me laughing and just shrugged and smiled. At times like that, I realise that life is still full of good moments!
Hope you get a bit more comfortable Alli xxx
Just edited my post a bit in case it sent everyone over the edge, I can be so miserable at times!
PS I have outbursts sometimes. I try and control them but I’m afraid, I have had the odd occasion when I have really snapped at someone. I haven’t told them why I’m ratty- they may think it’s the menopause and they’d be half right. For some strange reason, the carpark at M and S often does it for me! It makes me ask why and then I feel sorry for myself! Don’t understand it myself!
Hi Anne, i can totally relate to how you feel, today has been a bad day, went to the gps and just collapsed in floods of tears, i had a TIA at the beginning of this month, and i have to say, life seems to be going more downhill then uphill. when i think like that i feel guilty, cos i do have a lovely life really, three lovely healthy grown up kids, a fantastic hubby, a motorhome that we use to the hilt, but all i really want back is the old me, and thats never going to happen, i suppose i just want to be totally happy again as i was before i got diagnosed nearly 2 years ago. about time i grew up i think, i am no stranger to cancer, it killed both my parents and my sister has had bc in both sides, one positive the other negative, i had a positive cancer then as a result of a dodgy mammo i had the other side removed as well. sometimes i wish i had never found the damn lump, i was happy and very healthy, now i seem to be miserable and even though i walk 2 miles each day with my dog i ache all over and now drag my right leg after me, i am only 46, i never expected this to be my lot. oh and i hate the fact that i now dribble a little from the right side of my mouth!!! oh what fun cancer isn’t!
lots of love
Alisonxxxxxxxx
Hi Alison
Ouch, having a TIA and its complications on top must have been a massive blow. You are doing well to be as upbeat as you are. I am sorry to hear that cancer has had such an impact on your family too. Both my father and sister had cancer also- my sister thankfully cured by thyroid surgery, although she will be popping pills for the rest of her life.
It’s just hard to make sense of it all. I suppose all we can do is to weather our bad days and if we can find a four-legged pal to listen to our woes all the better. They never answer or try to give you advice or tell you what to do and they remind me of the wonderful innocence of life before BC!
In the meantime, I think anyoone who fancies a scream at someone whingeing about something really trivial should just go for it! What the heck! Anne xx
hi everyone
one thing cancer as done for me, is make me grab every moment.
i make chooses which will make me happy. and i dont feel guilty about that either,
i was talking to someone today, and she couldnt believe i had bc and had been through surgery, chemo, and have secondaries
and i said to her
"why do we wait for something like this before we give ourself permission to enjoy life. before i may have worried about stupid things and grumbled a little, like the people we get annoyed by, but i can honestly say at the moment i am reasonably happy.
of course im not happy to have bc, and i do get a lot of pain at times from my secondaries, but i have loads of friends and some of them are going through hard times in different ways, so i am grateful that i can help them, by at least not being too busy to listen.
i too have days when i feel dowm ,but i tend to get out and around nature and feel better
of course i appreciate you cant always bring yourself out of it, and you do need to make sure you are not clinically deppressed, which will make recovery harder
hopefully things will get easier for you all, and with acceptance you can make the most of your days, god bless x
I agree but I have to admit that, having really grabbed life after my diagnosis straight off with secondaries, worries about retirement etc brought me back to real life and its hurts. However, like Alison, I still love life and truly appreciate the good things and people I have in my life. And I still think our world is wonderful. And, like you, apparently I look great.
I think we all experience phases, sometimes I am so positive, sometimes I tune in to my spirituality, then I hit a patch of bad days/weeks, then a period of anger, happiness, sadness. I just try to go with the flow. Mainly I’m happy but sometimes it’s just all too confusing for my little brain and I just have to stamp my feet!
PS a quick edit, no, I’m not really happy most of the time. Real heartfelt happiness is a bit of a rarity now. There’s always that shadow and that bit of confusion.
I’m too old to do the school playground and anyway never had children but having been a teacher and a primary school governor I can well understand the horror of the playground gossip…and also I feel that in some ways the younger you are the harder it may be to deal with the experience of illness when its like everyone else is ‘normal.’
I was 54 at diagnosis (60 now)never really had much illness in my life and the moaners used to get to me. Except…except now, with friends 50 and 60 plus I do understand why people moan about ‘ailments.’ Chronic pain, bowel problems, hot flushes, heart consitions…thesze increasingly get to be the conversation topics of 50 plusers…and impacted faeces are impacted faeces whether its caused by the morphine you have to take for the pain of cancer or by chronic IBS.
And then again I do find myself hating those septogenerians who are still healthy enough to fly on long haul flights round the world, while I’m cautiosly considering if I can go to Amsterdam.
I have found for me that the experience of illness…a year of feeling shit through primary treatment and two years of the same and worse since regional (mets) recurrence is what grinds me down. Cancer…and yes hey I’m going to die…makes the whole thing worse of course…but the daily experieeince of bits of my body breaking down, fear of whether todays’s indigestion is indigestion or a sign that its in my liver; the littleel dizzy spell getting up too quickly from the chair…is it in my brain…and most of all knowing that these thoughts are not paranoia but an inevitable part of living
with a terminal diagnosis.
It so easy on a good day to talk about ‘grabbing the moment’ and sure I know those sunny happy moments, but I used to have them anyway before cannacer, before this shite in my life. I liked my old pre cancer life very much indeed. Living with the experience of cancer as an illness is bloody hard and horrid work. I know I’m going to die but I don’t like the thought of the route my death will take.
Jane
Oh, I chickened out. I was going to stick a poem I wrote (in WElsh, so not very helpful) on here> I called it ‘knowing’ and it’s about how life changes forever after a diagnosis of cancer.
It’s about the pain that comes with the knowledge that you have cancer, how church bells and hymns have new meaning, how even sunshine and sea spray (froth? can’t remember the word!) carry their own sadness, how birdsong and flowers have never seemed so beautiful when you know how fragile life is. About how even late spring days are too short and how restlessness makes the darkness of nights too long. Finally, it’s about accepting that life is what it has become and trying to live life with a purpose while your heart still beats.
Anyway, the uncertainty of it all means that we have to have bad days, I get loads of funny pains in my tum, achey feet in the morning, worries that if I try and do yoga, I may crunch a rib or a vertebra (so have stopped). At 45, I don’t like to tell people of these pains as they’re not that bad yet and it’s as if I don’t want to admit that cancer is doing this to me. Anyway, with the menopause thrown in for good measure, it’s a miracle that I have anything but bad days but I do.
I haven’t been on site for ages but like you I have been feeling really down. It annoys me, the spring is springing, sun shining and all that stuff. I should be feeling bright and happy but to be honest I feel c***p. As far as I know I am free of disease.
It is 18 months since I finished all the treatment (had the works) and I am still in pain from the rads and surgery, still fat and still feel incredibly tired after a days work. Don’t feel as though I have the energy for life and it is getting worse not better.
I keep telling myself this is a phase and I will feel better. Don’t always believe it though.
Oh Jane - if you make it Amsterdam try the Van Gogh Museum, the colours are gorgeous, nothing like the prints.
Well hope you all feel stronger and brighter in time
Jacqui
Jacqui,
I know those feelings! I know I’ve gone off on one and written a couple of posts that are probably over the top (what was I drinking?! especially when I wrote that one about the poem?)
But your post sums up what it feels like to be so p’d off about it all. Sometimes I just feel grumpy about it, can’t possibly see the bright side (is there one?!) and there is nothing I can do about it other than to sit it out and wait for my grumpiness to pass. It does. Longest grumpy phase for me this year was about 3 weeks…grrr, nothing felt right and everything was sh***. If they’d gone on for much longer I’d have considered going back on anti depressants. Anyway, I’m sure those feelings are common to all of us ladies, whatever stage we’re at. I prefer those feelings to the real soul searching ones, they are just scary.
Anne xx
PS I have phases like the one I’m in now when I just have to get on this site and go blah, blah, blah. It ususally lasts for 3 to 4 days! I’ll probably go quiet now for a few weeks, now I’ve got all of that out of my system! Sorry for posting so many times in this thread.
Anne,
Having met you never in a million years can I ever imagine you as grumpy!!
How are things? Have you decided yet if you are going to relocate?
I appreciate that this is a hard decision to make.
We are off to Portugal next week to play golf, I am going to try and switch off completely…easier said than done!!
Take care,
Love ,
Jan x