This amazing realisation struck me yesterday during a phone conversation with my sister-in-law!! She lives approx 35 miles from me. Mutual friend lives further 20 miles. We want to meet up.
She: I’ll pick up Shirl and we’ll come and visit.
Me: No need, I’ll come to you and we’ll both go to Shirl’s.
She: No, too far for you, you’ve got cancer.
Me. Don’t have it every day. I’ll come on a day I don’t have it.
So ladies, on the days you don’t have cancer, just go out and do whatever you can’t do on the days you DO have cancer! Simple!!!
What would you like to do on the days you don’t have cancer?
Maureen that is wonderful! I know from my experience with Lisa that she had some really good days, full of life, and even weeks where you could almost forget that she had BC. Chemo would knock her down a bit for a couple of days and then she would say that she felt fine and wanted to go out and ‘do something’ which we did. Last Christmas she was as if back to normal and we went and did loads.
Make the most of the days you ‘don’t have cancer’ brilliant!
Love Sue x
Yes - I agree. There may be some things you can’t do, but there is a heck of a lot of things you can do - so go and do them! Also if you forget you have cancer, then other people sometimes do as well.
on the days I don’t have cancer I want to go places with my kids. To the forest, the sea, playgrounds and one of the best…shopping with my 5yr old daughter. Well, that’s the one she likes best lol. I am just amazed every time that she has so much colour and fashion sense. I can’t remember me being like that. I just put on what my Mum gave me.
Oh no…I seem to have cancer every day and feel like I’ve failed…yet again…
The concept doesn’t work for me. Cancer does not define who I am but it is intergrated now into the whole of me. If I waited for days when I didn’t have cancer then I’d never do anything. Living with cancer for me means just that.
Interesting thread Granny Scouse! I try and carry on as normal as possible…like Jenny I agree I’m so bored with it now. I’m not buying into the whole cancer patient ‘package’ for as long as I can…but I can’t ever forget I have cancer…I found when I was first diagnosed stage 4 my mind would forget for a little while then it would come back to me and it was like being told my diagnosis all over again…think I was in shock for a while…so yes I never forget now but I feel I have much living left to do and up to now I’ve had such a good quality of life so I’m enjoying this to the full while it lasts. Apart from hospital visits or scans etc I try not to focus on cancer and don’t talk about it much. Belinda…x
Hmm… this is a difficult one I think (and I’m not speaking from personal experience -yet!- so feel free to shoot me down)…
I would imagine that it’s one thing to say: “This is a non-cancer day so I’m going to live it to the full” at certain stages of the disease but, if cancer has caused such disability/disfigurement that it affects every day, where does that leave someone?
If one has permanent nausea, very little is any fun. If one has a facial disfigurement that causes others to stare, staying quietly at home might be the most tolerable way to spend a ‘good’ day.
I like the idea, but I can’t help wondering if it sits in the same realm as the “isn’t she brave the way she fights her cancer” type of comment. Sorry.
Sadly I do have cancer every day, some days it interferes with what I would like to do other days it doesn’t. I too live with cancer and will die of cancer.
Debs
I think you are spot on. Yes I think the ‘live life to the full and forget cancer’ message is in the same category as ‘Isn’t she brave’.
I am not anywhere near as ill as many people with breast cancer but I do have it every day: in my cases it affects my walking and my talking and its nice when the people I spend time with take that into account when we’re planning ‘STUFF.’ My good friend who’s been a wheelchair user for many years would rightly be angry if I ‘forgot’ she was disabled and booked a restuarant with stairs. Now I hope she’s as careful with me about booking a noisy restaurant where its impossible for me to be heard. (We’ll soon not have restaurants left to go to…so is the world organised for ‘normal’ people…)
‘mustn’t’ think about cancer, mustn’t think about cancer, mustn’t think about cancer’…‘mustn’t talk about cancer’, ‘musn’t talk about cancer’ 'mustn’t…my goodness I don’t want to live up to these moral prescriptions.
Maureen
I am pleased for you that you can have days that you don’t have cancer and it is good for you emotionally to live a normal life as much as possible and for eberyone else to see that you can have secondaries and have normality.
Sadly, for a lot of us, we are too ill and this disease has robbed us of too much to allow us our normal capabilities so that we can’t have ‘non-cancer’ days.
In my dreams, I have non-cancer days but nearly everything in real life is effected by bc. I’m not sure if you are asking us to say what we would like to do in a dream world for a day or if you mean a day in our lives now as my answers are miles apart.
In a dream world, today i would like to go up in a hot air balloon over an african safari park.
Today’s world, I would like to be able to use all my fingers so I can type this reply quickly and accurately, not have a swollen belly and diarrhoea or be trying to find a position in bed or in a chair where my back doesn’t hurt, where my heart and breathing rate are normal, my ankles aren’t swollen,I have hair and eyebrows, I have no lymphoedema, I have a left boob and my children are not looking scared as they know how ill I am and will die soon. I would also like to be able to look at food and not have to eat it slowly or with loads of sauce on so I can swallow it.
As you all probably know, I do loads and go out a lot and I try not to let the cancer stop me doing things but it does. As a family, we have all adapted to ‘an ill mummy’ and the children have to care for me which seems so unfair. Theor lives are dominated by my health at that particular moment - 2 nights ago, the 11 yr old twins were caring for me. My son was preparing the nebulaiser so i could breathe and my daughter was heating up wheat bags and arranging my pillows and my 8 yr old was helping me get undressed.That is sadly an increasingly ‘normal’ day for me.
People are amazed by what I achieve when I am so ill but I have always been a driven person who wanted to achieve things and I am a frustratingly stubborn and determined person but that personality trait has I think kept me alive and trying to live normally!!!
I wonder Maureen, if that is what you were trying to get to in your post - that it is possible sometimes and for some people to have a ‘normal’ life with secondaries but sadly, there are a lot of us here in this forum who have severe limitations due to our cancer secondaries and that is why you have had so many angry or sad replies to your happy start of the thread.
For many of us with secondaries, we can not escape from the reality of having cancer everyday as it causes us pain, difficulties with everyday activities that it makes us angry, bitter, cynical, sad, tearful, scared, frightened and living with the uncertainty of when we will die and how that will be and where the next secondary will be etc.
As I started off by saying, I am genuinely happy (and probably jealous) that you can have days without cancer dominating your life but for myself and for many others, we are now too ill to have these days.
I think you wanted this to be a happy thread like our ‘gormless’ one but it’s gone a bit pearshaped for you so my interpretation of your thread by reading the last sentence in a different way would be
‘what would you really like to be doing today’ rather than
‘what would like to be doing today remembering you have secondary cancer?’
As i said in an ideal world, I would be in a hot air balloon floating over an african safari reserve with all the rose champgane and Gordon ramsay’s just deserts chocolates!!!
Hope you had a fun day and that you continue to have good normal days.
Kate
You are a very brave lady to put this thread up as it was always going to spark off mixed replies, anger,sadness and everything else that has been posted.
I am in the I don’t have cancer everyday but I am very well and pain free at the moment so it makes a huge difference.
I make the most of every day and have come to terms with my future and what it holds for me.
Will I die from cancer? Probably although I do have the odd scary moment on the motorbike… but until it happens I’ll not waste my time thinking about it.
It was lovely to read the other posts as I am all about life and not being a victim…I do everything I can to make a difference as I am sure many others have.
I have done more since my secondary diagnoses as …
‘what is the worst that can happen’?..
Oh I think it already has…
I know some of you are struggling big time and this is not to be dismissed but for me right now it was so good read that there are other women like me who are OK.
The plate on my bike acctully says…
“you can’t keep a good women down”
(Jane, that’s a hell of a lot of cancer you mustnt be thinking of…wouldn’t it be easier to rob a bank)!!!
You know you are not an inspiration to me and you know too how very sad I will be and how much I will miss your wisdom and capacity to cut through the crap…in cyber world and for real… when you finally go to the great gobbygang annexe in the sky.
Yes, what started off as a light-hearted thread has turned into something very different.
I do not apologise for my post. Cancer DOES dominate my life. It’s with me all the time. It’s a big bubble above my head: “I’ve got cancer, I’ve got cancer.”
I don’t want fuss, I don’t want pity.
My friends and relatives don’t NEED me to be down. I try not to be for their sakes. I can’t imagine how they must feel, feeling helpless in all of this.
When I’m down, I don’t answer the phone, I don’t answer the door.
I’m not, yet, where some of you are, but I will be, in time. In the meantime, I’m getting by the best way I can.
Finally, I did not post in an attempt to portray how “isn’t she brave the way she fights her cancer”. And, Sassie, what are you “sorry” for? I don’t believe in apologising for anything unless I’ve done wrong. I never apologise for anyone else. Or at least I don’t think I do.
Please be assured, Maureen, that I wasn’t apologising for anyone other than myself - wouldn’t dream of it! I ended with “sorry” because it was obvious that your post came from the very best of motives, and I was, genuinely, ‘sorry’ to have to disagree.