Hi girls
fantan I’m 3 and half years on too, we must’ve been diagnosed around the same time - wonder how many other poor XX"£!%s were too! and still they keep coming…and I am still so so angry that they say nothing, nothing, about the aftermath, you get a bc nurse, who bless her does her best, but really you’re on your own - I so identify with men coming back from the trenches in WW1, shot to bits and shellshocked, lives changed, and at that time, people just didn’t talk about it, I don’t think the word ‘emotion’ had been invented (didn’t the Americans invent emotions round about the 60s?) so they never talked about it, just woke up nights screaming…that is why it takes you by surprise, like you’re driving along in the sunshine thinking, oh, this could be a lovely day, and wham, there it hits you again, out of the blue. Maybe they were right not to talk about it because people just aren’t going to understand and it is more painful not being understood than people not knowing I find, oh I don’t know, it’s one pain or another really…
I think we have to accept that this is how it is going to be, the way it takes us, that it will work itself through to something else, something more bearable, in its own time, snapping out of it isn’t an option - god knows if it was as simple as that would we not do that and avoid all this? Maybe we just have to take an interest in this journey as travellers into the unknown - not a pleasant journey, but here we are, and we can control it this much, that we can say to ourselves, well, I’m not going to rush, and I’m not going to blame myself, I’ll just let things develop at their own pace, one day things will be better…
And Seren the air is blue with what I’d like to say to people who think that anything we do either caused our cancer, can prevent more, or can get us through it quicker. Unfortunately, and people may disagree with me here, not only is our cancer most certainly not a consequence of our lifestyle or behaviour (for every one of us there are eight without bc who live just the same lives, same risk factors etc, all things considered - unless there really are people out there who have from conception led lives of serenity and pureness with perfectly balanced vitamins…of course there aren’t, my eye) but also whether we think the doomiest most negative thoughts or the brightest Pollyanna stuff, life will be the same - otherwise it would be true that all depressives get cancer and no optimists do. It is neither here nor there, this ‘think positive’ - the reason people say it is because it is the one thing we can actually do, the one thing we appear to have some control over, since we do not actually have control over whether we get sick or whether we get better - as the brutality and uncertainty of the treatment shows - god knows we wouldn’t choose this mutilation if there was any other way…and even when we have, we can’t be sure…so a few positive thoughts added to that are a bit like sticking a plaster on a severed limb…
oh it doesn’t take much to set me off, does it; one day I’ll be able to think about something else…
love and hugs
snowwhite