I wonder if other people have had times in their lives when it seems so many people close to them have cancer.
I was so upset with hubby the other night and his stupid comment.
He said when i was crying about this crap disease and how many people close to me have it ‘well what do you expect going on BCC and meeting people from it’
Yes some are from BCC BUT i have my neighbour who has to have her ovaries and womb removed and radiotherapy this month. My best friends hubby who has asbestosis related lung cancer which is terminal, another friends hubby who had bowel cancer same time as i was Dx with BC used to chat at hosp, he has now been told he has less than a year to live and no treatment.
Just to cap it all a friend who has been such a wonderful help to me over the years has breast cancer Dx this week.
I have honestly felt i am going under this week.
I HATE THIS DISEASE.
Hope people dont mind me having a moan this site is great for that.
I know what you mean, its everywhere you look. A lady I was working with earlier this year had cancer of the osoeghus (spelling)?? who now has secondaries in her spine, a friend was dx with a rare kind of breast cancer in her armpit (not actual breast) which has gone to her bones, then my mum was dx with breast cancer in March, and a male friend was dx with colon cancer this week. It is almost a year to the day that one of my friends mums died of liver secondaries, from original bowel cancer. You do get to the stage of thinking who next?
A few months back I felt the same… the stats say 1 in 3 people will deal with cancer at some point.
I moved to a fairly small village 4 years ago. Since I moved here a lovely man I knew who was father of the landlady of the pub next door died from cancer (throat I think). Another old guy who’s a lovely man who frequents the pub jad a cancer on his nose which was removed he’s still around.
A lady I never got to meet (who I think may have been a user of this forum) dies from BC a couple of months ago and it knocked my for six, she was the ex wife of a good friend and I’d been following her story and was gutted (it was 3 days after zotams Lisa died and I was just so angry about that).
But in the midst of the sadness I nearly lost sight of my good friend who was diagnosed 10 years ago who’s given me so much advice through this, my mother in laws sister who still NED 13 years later. A new lady who’s just moved in to the village picked up on me saying I was a bit run down so I said I was doing chemo. She did it 20 years ago and is still standing.
This is part of the problem, we here about those who die and are in treatment. Those who move on often keep it to themselves, women are often more open. How many men are dealing with prostate cancer… silently?
I’m now finding that in this tiny communtiy more people that I imagines know what I’m currently dealing with and because I’ve tried to talk about normal things and still mix with people I’m finding out just how common it is… and how many people are still here many many years later and telling me their stories.
It’s humbling… I’m really glad I didn’t try and pretend this isn’t happening to those around me. I live amongst some truly wonderful people. I’m really glad I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
There’s gonna be one hell of a party when I finish treatment.
As you know my mum is having rads at the Marsden this week (so far doing ok, but a little tired).
Yesterday while waiting for her treatment, she saw two small children, both around the three mark being brought in at separate times on beds sedated ready for treatment. (a boy and a girl). Mum said the little girl had a pink fluffy dressing gown and a back pack on the end of the bed. Well that did it for me, really brought tears to my eyes. How the hell can this awful disease pick on babies, how must it feel being the parents of those children. Sorry to be depressing, but that really got to me this morning and the unfairness and sadness of the whole bloody thing. Its awful enough that my mum has cancer, but babies, its so bloody wrong.
I took a short cut through my local graveyard the other evening and in the part with all the recent stones (only going back up to 5 years at most) there were people there who had died at 19, mid 20s and early 30s. I said to my OH I felt very lucky to get to 47 despite all the trauma of cancer. It really made me look at things in a different light. Cancer is one thing, but I find it important to remember that there are other killer diseases - over 10 years ago I had a friend who was diagnosed with the same degenerative condition as the late Dudley Moore. He ended up in a wheelchair for the latter part of his life but he never gave up. At the same time I had another friend who hanged himself after suffering depression and none of us knew how bad his mental state was.
I find I don’t think about the possibility of this coming back so much now as I just want to get on and do things - worrying would just hold me back. I’ve been seeing a really good psychologist attached to my clinic for counselling and have come a long way since I started seeing her in May - she thinks she will be able to discharge me in October and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the help she has given me.
seems that a lot of people get cancer and as its in the news alot more notice is taken of it ,i must admit that before my diognosis i didnt really have a clue as to how many ,but recently ive found to my cost just what this c…p desease is like ,as lost my sister and my brother in law to bowel cancer both on the same day, and with me 2 yrs down the line just found out that x ma in law has breast cancer ,my own daughter has had cancerous cells removed from her cervix so at the moment am overwhemled by it all .wish these celebs dididnt trivialise it so much though !
lynn x
To be honest I think when you have a cancer diagnosis the truth of it is we tend to look for those who also have the disease and maybe we notice it more.
I lost my dad to kidney cancer just as I was diagnosed with BC then a close friend died relatively quickly afterwards aswell, there does seem to be alot of cancer around these days, is it because we are better at diagnosing it now as opposed to years ago when people may have died from it but they didnt know what it was? is it because there are more chemicals around now effecting us? I really dont know but 1 in 3 is a hell of alot of people and it does appear that more and more younger people are getting it now.
It still probably THE one disease that strikes fear in people, you can tell a person they have heart disease etc and it does not have the same dred about it somehow, even though 9 times out of ten heart disease is a terminal disease, unlike some cancers that can go into remission for ever. The thing with cancer is it gets people regardless of lifestyle choices, whether you smoke, drink, live off mung beans or whatever id does not discriminate, whereas alot of heart disease is something you can sometimes prevent with living a healthy lifestyle, its frightening that we can treat our bodies like temples and yet still get this crappy illness, I recently heard of a girl in her 30’s who died of lung cancer and never smoked a ciggie in her life, its the fear of not knowing the absolute cause of cancer that gets me.
Also on the subject of asbestosis, my grandad was mining asbestos during the 40’s/50’s smoked like a trooper and lived to be 87, its a crap shot isnt it?