How to Live with Hope
How to Live with Hope I am finding the discussion on euthenasia very difficult to cope with. The accounts of people dying in terrible circumstances are heartrending and very hard to read. I do understand why people feel the need to post about them and do not want to post anything on that thread which might make them reluctant to do so. These stories might help some people to prepare for the worst although they terrify me and make me very depressed.
It might be a good idea to counter some of the despair with a thread in which people can post happier news and stories that give us hope.
I desperately need some of that and I am sure many other people do too.
Best wishes
Roisin
Roisin I am sorry that the euthanasia thread is making you feel down. EVerybody deals with things differently and there is no right or wrong way - I prefer to deal with my fears head-on but I am acutely aware that this is my way of dealing with things and not everyone feels the same. I apologise if anything I have posted has upset you.
More cheerful story for you…!!
My godmother is in her 70s. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in her early 40s. Her prognosis wasn’t particularly good but she is still here over 30 years later - absolutely no sign of mets, no recurrence - everything fine. She has been brilliant towards me - very supportive and understanding. My parents were close friends of her and her husband and I am close friends with their daughter. We have known them for years. I look back now at when I was a teenager and can remember clearly when she was diagnosed. It wasn’t a good time although at the time I didn’t quite realise the seriousness of it all. So much was hushed up in those days.
She’s never looked back - I know she has had wobbly moments when going for check-ups etc but all in all has had a clean bill of health ever since.
We don’t hear enough about the people that are ok - do we?
Best wishes
bjj xx
— hI Roisin — Like Bjj I like to know the full facts and find discussion vital to obtain this, but because I know how despite this they upset me, I understand where you are coming from.
A good news story for you. My mum was diagnosed thirteen years ago with breast cancer. She is stillhere today and I love her to bits though she drives me round the bend at times. I am sole carer for her and my dad. No mets, and as bright as a button for her age. Very witty at times and certainly more on the ball than me after my chemo head.
Joy xxx
Hi Roisin Whilst working as a fundraiser last year (before my own dire diagnosis) I met a lady who asked me to bear with her as she wrote out a cheque (she had trouble using her writing arm). She explained that she had had a mastectomy over 40 years ago for a lump in her breast. Our conversation stayed with me, for some reason. I often think of her now, in her eighties, bright as you like, a testament to the earlier days of cancer treatment.
Jenny
x
On hope For me talking about death, debating voluntary euthanasia and living with hope are not mutually exclusive. You can do both, though probably not in the same thread
I’d recommend a thoughtful book called The Anatomy of Hope by Dr Jerome Groopman who explores why and how people find hope despite facing severe illness.
In the forward to the book are these words which I think are beautiful:
“Pandora, the first mortal woman, received from Zeus a box that she was forbidden to open. The box contained all human blessings and all human curses. Temptation overcame restraint, and Pandora opened it. In a moment, all the curses were released into the world, and all the blessings escaped and were lost-except one: hope. Without hope, mortals could not endure.”
__
I think we are all livng with hope…that is part of the joy of being alive.
Jane
Living with hope. Jane you are so right, talking about death and living with hope are not at all mutually exclusive. I find it depressing that we shy from talking of death these days, it’s part of the natural cycle of life. The most joyous people I have met in recent years have been other women living with mets.
I live with hope every day.
Belinda.x
another positive story My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer 13 years ago, she was given approx. 6 months to live. She underwent chemo, radiotherapy and went to a faith healer! She’s still here today with no reaccurances.
I think stories like this show us that a diagnosis of breast cancer does not have to be a death sentence.
It is possible to live with breast cancer!!
Adele
Hope I think we are all examples of living with hope. Reading all the posts in the secondaries forum, in particular, and all that encompasses never diminishes that feeling.
“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.” Martin Luther King Jnr.
Love Twinkle xoxo
Hope This isn’t about breast cancer, but another disease. My mother was diagnosed with TB at the age of 26, just after the end of the Second World War. She and my father married in 1941 and he was posted abroad for 4 years. When he came home, their hopes of starting a happy married life together were ruined by her diagnosis.
She was told that the only way she would survive the disease was if she took complete bed rest for 9 months. She & my father were living in a grotty flat in Leeds at the time, but she decided that the only hope of survival was to follow her doctors’ advice.
She had complete bed rest for 9 months and, during that time, decided she wanted to become a member of the Catholic Church, as my father was.
Eventually, she made a good recovery from TB. Her doctors told her that she had healed remarkably quickly, but she still had annual chest x-rays until the early 70s to make sure the disease had not returned. She became pregnant with me when she was 34 and was offered an abortion because of her medical history (I did question her on that because I thought abortion was illegal till 1967, even when the mother’s health was at risk, but she is adamant it’s true) anyway she says she refused abortion on religious grounds and I’m here today. When I was a child, she occasionally was incapacitated with bouts of Bronchial Asthma as a result of the TB, but by the mid 70s, they no longer occurred.
Interestingly, both my children b 1985 & 1988 were vaccinated against TB soon after birth as there was a slight risk that my mother could still be carrying the disease and pass it to them through close contact.
My mother is 85 in May and gives me hope because she survived a disease that used to kill many people and I hope I have inherited some of her resilience.
Something completely different - yesterday was a bright sunny day, a day of various family celebrations for us and we went to see the Aardman animations exhibition in Bristol where they have all the props and models from Wallace & Gromit & the Were-Rabbit. It was so nice to see everyone there with a smile on their face.
Roisin, you started this good thread as a counterbalance to the Euthanasia one. What things give you hope or bursts of happiness?
Roisin I dont have any stories like some of these lovely ones, but if you could hear my boys giggling together over something ridiculous but sidesplitting at the same time you couldnt help but smile too.
Some conversations suit some people. Many people will have read the other one and not wanted to continue reading. Sorry you found it hard to bear.
Take care
Steph x