Hi Liverbird
When treatment is all over and you are supposedly “better” it is really really really hard, I find. It is cosy being a “sick person” but hey, you get sick, you have the treatment, you get better. Don’t you? No, I never was sick, so the treatment has made me much much worse than I was before (and I didn’t have rads or chemo I’m just talking about the surgery, so the rads and the chemo make you even worse) - but, you “recover” from the treatment. Then there’s life. That’s the hard bit. Some days I feel like the undead, like I’ve been sent to limbo, like I’m not dead, but I’m not alive either - not dead, because I’m alive, and well, even; yet, still, not alive - because of what has been taken away from me, this has put me, I feel, into a place where you are prepared for death. So it is a bit like being a dying person when you’re not dying. I am a dying person because I wonder everyday is this the beginning of the end. I don’t expect a future. I live the pain of parting from my children, while they are right here, happy because they don’t know what I’m thinking. And I am a dying person because I have lost something that is so important to the living, like an old old person facing the end - as you age you gradually lose those things important to the living - mobility, strength, libido, sex. BC treatment takes some of this away from you suddenly instead of gradually, and while you’re still (relatively) young - so you’re in this limbo, and it’s not obvious from the outside.
But how can you explain all that to friends over dinner, or acquaintances in the supermarket, or well-meaning vicars who enquire after your health? Or even to tired, busy, kind, well-meaning family? Or husbands? I do force my poor husband to listen to me harping on sometimes, but one doesn’t wish to bore…and it just sounds like wingeing, which we don’t do, do we.
Family are often poor listeners with all the love in the world: they want to encourage so they make encouraging noises, but what we really need is acknowledgement, understanding. We don’t actually want someone to say “Don’t feel like that, feel like this it’s nicer”, we want someone to say, “I see, I understand, yes, it is serious, it has been traumatic, it is a great loss, it is not trivial, it is a terrible thing.” My dear husband does do that (because I tell him to), but I’m afraid it doesn’t go away just because he’s said that. This has been the biggest trauma of my not trouble-free life, and I can see now it’s gonna take years…(off my life?)…Interesting, isn’t it?
So - to Liverbird - maybe ask hubs to tell you that he can imagine (a bit) what it would feel like, being here. I find that helps. And from me - I say, scweam and scweam until you’re sick, you have every right, I’m listening and saying go girl.
xxx snowwhite