I started treatment for tnbc in January. I am currently on weekly treatment for 4 cycles. I feel incredibly ungrateful but i have friends texting me weekly to ask how i am and how chemo has gone and i am just ignoring people. I find it overwhelming but moreso i dont have anything to say and honestly i find it a little annoying. They are good friends but due to busy life we’d probably normally go weeks without talking. I know they care but i feel like me updating them is to make them feel better thats just not my job. I feel so selfish writing this but i dont want to have to send weekly updates. Please can anyone relate or in nice way tell me im looking at this all wrong and explain how they manage this?
you are not ungrateful and it is kind they are checking in. Don’t be hard on yourself getting a bc diagnosis and having your world turned upside down and focusing on getting through treatment is something that sometimes you don’t want to keep repeating to everyone. Maybe just say when they ask I appreciate you checking in and you are getting through thank you. I remember at the start having a word with my friends and said I’m still me, treat me like me so we talked about other things too like we would have it’s hard you don’t want to offend anyone and they should understand that you not wanting to share everything. And for those who feel shut out and take offence, well they were never a real friend and that’s their problem. Shi xx
Totallly 100% relate. I hated people getting in touch with messages about how I was.
Seriously, how do they think we are! And people telling me to ‘kick cancer’s ass’ - a phrase I despise.
Unfortunately my mother who lives away from us took it upon herself to tell everyone she knew - hence more messages from family members I hadn’t spoken to in 20 years.
My husband took every call and replied to every message and told people not to get in touch and I would get in touch when I was ready.
Those who repeated, got blocked - genuinely. I have a couple of former friends who I blocked from my life and feel better for it. If they can’t respect my wishes, I no longer want anything to do with them.
So my advice would be to get someone to respond on your behalf - and don’t be afraid to block them out! xx
@letsdothis, I can relate to the difficulty of updating friends (and family) completely. I am beginning to wish I hadn’t told anyone the news, even family members. I am now finding myself having to support those who contact me asking for news. I have no news. I am still waiting myself to hear my results (Tuesday).
Supporting others can be exhausting. Answering calls, emails, WhatsApp messages takes time and sometimes prevents me from looking after myself properly. I just cannot afford to go there. I have to be selfish to survive this. I have to put “me” first before letting others know what is happening. Talking for hours is not going to put a nourishing meal on the table at a time when I most need it or allow me time to take a walk, to rest, or to do whatever needs to be done.
How can we be expected to go through the details over and over again. From diagnosis, to treatments, to cancer free periods is a difficult journey and there will be ups and downs that we may or may not wish to talk about.
My husband is Italian and proud. All his life he has never wished to tell family and friends about his health conditions and he has more than most. When asked how he is, he always responds, “I am very well, thank you”. He says this even when he sees his doctors which can actually work against him (and me) and I have to quickly fill in the gaps, otherwise his doctors would never get the true picture during our often all too brief appointments.
Our Italian family have not been told about my cancer diagnosis and for the moment until things are clearer, I think I am going to leave it that way. I cannot see how telling them is going to help me get through this if they start ringing, texting, sending gifts, catching the next flight over to see us . . .
So i can understand completely why you have posted your question. We are certainly not ungrateful. We just need time to properly look after ourselves and not to have to go through the endless stress of repeating our experience with cancer over and over again
Yes absolutely understand where youre coming from on this!
I tried to nominate 1 person from each circle of fiends/ family/ support network and get them to circulate any information so that it was less messages for me to send.
It kind of worked for a while but i still get personal messages filling up my inbox.
I started to get lots of flowers, even from people i had not heard from for years! I couldn’t handle that and they all went out in the garden out of sight. Sounds bad eh?
In the end I wrote one generic message on any updates of my treatments, copy and pasred to anyone messaging me.
And when I felt the NEED to talk, during loneliness and isolation, I would personally answer the nessessary person with my feelings. ( Which made ME feel better) .
Some times i feel it it important to make sure you put your mental health first. This is your journey and you need to deal with it in your way. I assure you that you are not being ungrateful. Youre exhausted by the immense amount of information your having to process, then expected to relay to friends and family.
As you can see quite a few of us have experienced this and then are left to feel guilty about other peoples feelings. So you’re not alone.
My advice is do it in your own time, the way you want to do it. The people who care about you will soon get to understand how you are dealing with it, and youll have more freedom to think .
I hope this has been useful to you.
Be kind to yourself first .
Sending hugs x
Thank you. Reading this topic has been really helpful to me as a parent of a daughter with bc. It’s enabled me to view things from her perspective.
The messages, the flowers, the visitors, the constant enquiries for updates all on top of treatment, side effects and numerous appointments. It’s exhausting and in reality it’s not sustainable.
So glad to read other people feel this way, I thought I was just being churlish. Nice to know people are thinking of me with a quick ‘thinking of you or sending you love’ messages but don’t want to have to update people. And I really don’t need being told how strong/brave/tough I am fighting this cancer. I’m not fighting nor am I brave or strong, I’m just dealing with it.
you are not ungrateful and it is kind they are checking in. Don’t be hard on yourself getting a bc diagnosis and having your world turned upside down and focusing on getting through treatment is something that sometimes you don’t want to keep repeating to everyone. Maybe just say when they ask I appreciate you checking in and you are getting through thank you. I remember at the start having a word with my friends and said I’m still me, treat me like me so we talked about other things too like we would have 
Sounds bad eh?
