This thread needs a bump. There may well be the same comments said over and over again, but it can be good to just let it all out.
My first time on this thread and after reading some of the other posts realize that I’ve been holding back as people do say the most insensitive things.
When I was first diagnosed I had to tell everyone most cried others fell silent and a couple just could not accept what I was telling them they choose denial. One particular friend when I told her my dx which was both primary and secondaries all at once told me how her stepmother whom she never liked had just died of breast cancer that had spread onto her brain 1st blow not something you need to hear upon being dx 2nd blow was that she thought as her stepmother was not a very nice person that maybe she was being punished and thats why she got breast cancer! I ask you how insensitive was that upon reflection I just cannot believe it at the time I was going out of my mind with worry stress and anxiety but afterwards and still now this bugs me a. that she could say such a thing and b. that she is the most insensitive person I have ever come across, This was totally not well meaning and very very annoying!
End of rant
love to all
sarahlousie xx
Oh SarahLouise what an absolute ,well I was going call her a bovine animal but it seemed a bit strong for this thread. Lol.
A lot of my friends think everything is going to be ok too. Well, I don’t mind that so much as they keep in touch
Xxxx Sarah
Grumpy, lol, what a tonic small ones can be, really made me chuckle.
So glad to find this thread as thought it was just me that peeps said the most outrageous things to. I rationalise it and say that they don’t mean quite what they say, but they just feel the need to say something. So they open their mouths and put their feet in!
I’m finding it hard right now to just smile politely and laugh comments off. I’ts probably my own fault as I usually have such a good sense of humour that I think peeps forget I’m soft underneath and can be hurt by their comments.
On a brighter note, I didn’t realise how many highly qualifiefd cancer experts I knew, everyone seems to know so much more than my cancer team, as they all know that Bc is curable and a lovely nice cancer to have isn’t it.
What a lucky lot we must all be - NOT!
Samos, you are so right about the cancer experts that surround us and we never knew! So many friends have had sisters, friends, mothers with BC and pass on their “expertise” on chemo, coping, survival with little thought that not only are they not being tactful, but they are not even right!
Rant over!
It’s the “oh, I knew someone who had that and she died” kind of thing that is really unhelpful, isn’t it…
Fairly pathetic really but one not uncommon comment that did make me sad at times was that upon losing my hair (which was already shortish) during chemo I was told ‘at least it isn’t as bad as someone with long hair losing it’ and this usually from a female with longer hair who knew someone who had long hair and had lost it through chemo…clearly the level of trauma was related to length of hair…I think not.
Frankly for most of the time I went ‘bald’, no hair, no wig, no scarf, no hat - never have coped well with anything on my head…but, it was still my hair and part of who I saw each day in the mirror and it still made me sad when it went, but paled in significance to the Dx itself!
I found the dark humour of my blokey friends so much easier as we compared ‘baldness’ and my oneupmanship of re-growth!
Thankfully the wonderful support, humour, laughter and hugs from many have far out-weighed the insensitivity of a few during my journey.
Sxx
Have spent most of today reading this thread with a lot of sharp intake of breath, gasping and giggling.
Is funny how it depends who makes the remark. When I shaved my head my ES made a prisoner number to hold up for my mug shot and DD said I looked like the ‘boy in stripped pyjamas’. OH just handed me a duster! But it was done in a humourous way and was just their way hiding their own fear.
Also had the ‘if your going to have cancer then breast cancer is the one to have’. I felt like giving them a swift punch in the nose and saying ‘if your going to have a broken bone that’s the one to have’.
My neighbour is have treatment for cancer of the oesophagus mainly rads and when I said I had BC he just said ‘o you’ll be alright, they can cure that’. He is 90. I had no words so I just walked away.
Anne xx
Well I haven’t gone off and checked your profile Scotianne but you have a much better chance of seeing Christmas than he has, even without his cancer, so in a year’s time you will be glad you bit your tongue and were not unkind to an old man. They can’t cure old age. It’s so good that we can come here and rant.
SarahLouise, did that rude woman’s mother never teach her, not to speak ill of the dead? One thing with BC, you do find out a lot about your “friends”.
Scotieanne, loved the bit about the broken bone, that raised a huge guffaw.
As you say, so much depends on who says it and how they say it. My family have been able to make the darkest, most inappropriate comments around and we’ve just had a hoot about them because we have found that black humour is our way of getting through things. But when a relative stranger decides to pontificate, I get rather cross and go into “educational mode”, pointing out the things that they didn’t realise (like NED rather than “cured” and the chances of it coming back, and that my treatment will go on for about 6 and a half years after initial diagnosis, at least). However, even then if it’s said in a kind way my response can be said kindly too, so that I’m informing them rather than having a go at them.
Context is everything, really.
HOW ARE YOU???!!
Pianoorchid, that really made me spit my tea out laughing!! Most days I look like hell on earth at the moment with drawn on eyebrows when I can be bothered, but I do feel for some of the folk I haven’t seen for a while, it must be hard to try and say the right thing, but you forgot the ending to that question
HOW ARE YOU, IN YOURSELF!!!
Out of mouth comes, “not bad thanks, getting there”
Inside head screaming “How do I look, cos I feel like…” sorry there’s just too many swear words that follow that!!! Don’t want to get banned from the site! haha!
He he,
It’s a good job we’ve got a sense of humour about it!! I actually finished my first cycle of FEC-T last week in a fit of hysterical laughter…hadn’t seen that one before.
Maybe we should just start being honest about how we feel…‘I’m just tired’ doesn’t really cut it’.
Sxx
walking down the street last week meet a lady i hadnt seen for ages she asked how i was she had heard that i had breast cancer,i told her that i had had a right mx she replied ,never mind at least at your age you wont miss it ,as i walked off i thought how stupid people can be.missmessyx
oh my goodness, how insensitive, maybe there’s a good reason why you haven’t seen that person for ages!!! ((Hugs)).
“Yes you heard right, i’m sorry your Get-well card never arrived…”
At her age she won’t miss her brain, she doesn’t even realise it’s gone.
I visited the unit today, the nurses there are all lovely but one of them definately has a bit of foot in mouth disease…
Nurse: hi clare are you here for a flush
Me: i need to get bloods checked as im having line removed tomorrow
Nurse: oh whys that?
Me: cos i dont need it anymore
Nurse: oh are you all finished then?
Me: yep thank god
Nurse: oh that went really quick
Er no not for me it didnt!
Hated all the ‘thinking of you’ cards I got when first diagnosed, well meaning I know and I’m sure I sent some of these before diagnosis, but I reached the point after my third surgery where my daughter would open my mail, and if it was one of these, tell me who they were from and bin them straight away! The funniest one that was said about me was by my two beautiful great nieces, then 3 and 5 years old. I was just about to start chemo (FEC) and my niece told them Auntie Annie was having some medicine to make me better but it would make my hair fall out (which incidently, it didn’t, it just thinned after having it shaved to a number 2!). That night they were saying their prayers in their bedroom and she heard the three year old saying “Thank you God for giving Auntie Annie the medicine to make her better which makes her hair fall out, but God, I NEVER want any of that medicine thank you!” Then she the five year old say, “Nor me thank you God” Priceless!!
LTL, from the mouths of babes, eh? As you say, totally priceless!
My best one. The day I meet my surgeon for the first time. He has the results of my CT scan. I don’t. Woman in what I took be a nurse’s uniform show me and husband into consultant’s room. ‘What are your symptoms?’ she asks. ‘I don’t have any’ I reply. ‘Then why are you here? she demands.
Me: (silently)’ Well I have nothing better to do on a sunny October morning so I thought I’d just drop in to see a cancer surgeon!!!’
She then went on to inform me that the consultant probably hadn’t read my file yet so there may be a bit of a wait!
Have since seen her at the Reception desk messing up everyone’s appointments and struggling with the keyboard on her computer. Grrr!