I just want to add to this thread. When i started out on this journey i wouldn’t have described the feeling as scared, in fact i just felt shit most of the time during chemo/rads but over the last few months ( i finished rads end of may then went on to have a reduction on non BC breast in Aug) i have felt truly scared, i feel a sense on panic that is so overwhelming at times it makes me usless. When i was diaganosed i too never felt a lump it was only the swollen lymph gland that set off any alarms, i didn’t feel ill when diagnosed, didn’t feel ill during surgery, yet now i feel like an old hag , a crock so down in the dumps. I hate meeting people socially as i can’t always keep up a pretence of all is ’ great and rosy’. this time of year i think doesn’t help matters
I hope no one minds me joining this thread…I was diagnosed in May 2008 as Grade 3 invasive with lymph involment which wasnt diagnosed until after my op and re-construction…done the chemo and radiotheraphy and just finished a course of 17 herceptin…had 12 until June 2008 then heart issues with a four month break…and against cardio oligist advice but with onc approval resumed Hercecptin to give me peace of mind… I have to have my first mammogram in 2010 since my op and dread this… have been lost in the system cause my original surgeon at Glenfield in Leicester went off on what they call ‘Leave’ should have had it in October 2009. Am Already on the happy pills …where do we go from here when you lose the hospital support…am in England with ,my family in Northern Ireland… my partner chucked my dinner in my face today because I told him Im sick picking up his rubbish and bits and pieces… I admit Im not easy to live with but according to him its all my own fault…now have two hot spots on my face caused by burning hot gravy … he said I gave him hell this past two week…thats his ‘xcuse’ I dfont have one… where does one go for support… Thanks forum… for listening … advice greatly welcomed…
Lyn, he’s a bastard. “Not easy to live with” means he can chuck hot gravy in your face? Like how does that make HIM “easy to live with”? IT ISN’T YOUR FAULT - you’ve been through hell with the BC, and the least you can expect from him is a little understanding - and a little less rubbish to pick up. Get in touch with your local Women’s Refuge - most of them have people who you can talk to, even if you decide to stay (which many women do.) If you decide to leave, they can help you.
Lyn i echo susannes post. Do not put up with agressive behaviour from a partner. If your family are in northern ireland perhaps you could go home for a bit for a break to decide what would be best for you?
The stress of BC is enormous and it is unsurprising if relationships fail or faulter but please dont tolerate behaviour like this.
Hi Lyn, You do not need this man in your life. What this man has done to you is unforgiveable. What happened after he threw the gravy at you. Did you just accept it or did you manage to tell him how you felt? This needs some professional help to sort out as you have both been through a difficult time. HOWEVER, treating you in this way IS JUST NOT ON!!! Tell him I said so! Love Val XX
Oh Lyn, I agree with what others have already said. You have been through SO, SO much, and you certainly not need or deserve to be treated in such a way. I assume you live together and if you are worried about leaving the home, please please contact your local Womens Refuge or the Domestic Abuse Helpline. I can’t remember the number offhand, but I think you can get it from the Internet. They can offer advice, support and help, even if this if the first time he has done anything like this.
You have not asked for it, no matter how difficult you are to live with at the moment. I sometimes wonder why my husband puts up with me and my mood swings, but he does because he loves me. Someone who loves you does not throw hot gravy in your face.
Please let us know if we can do anything to help, you have a lot of friends on here.
Hi i wondered it i could join this thread!
I finished treatment (well major treatment anyway) on the 22nd December with ovary removal, i will still be having herceptin until July next year, but do not see oncl now for three months. I have had a very emotional xmas, keep thinking about it all coming back and that i need to do something great with my life or it will come back because i have not appreciated what i have enough!! My hubby says i am mad to think like that as it is too much to live up to which i agree with but cant help feeling like it. I want to do so much to get involved in cancer care, but have lost all my confidence and self-esteem that i do not know where to start!! I think people around me as well, expect me to be happy now that it is all over, a new year a new start and all that but it is not that easy although i would really like it to be! I too have been very positive and upbeat during the treatment and have not allowed myslef to be negative and i was told that there would be a down but i hate feeling this way!
It’s the pits, ennit Karen? Just when you think you should be feeling great, this ruddy great cloud comes along and starts p*ssing all over you. But you do NOT have to do anything spectacular to deserve the right to be healthy! I keep telling myself my body’s been through the wringer this past year, it’s no wonder I’m knackered. Not to mention the mental battering, from that first awful moment when you hear the words “It’s cancer” through having to keep picking yourself up after chemo and go back and let them do it to you again, to the constant nagging fear of finding another lump, or that odd little twinge turning out to be something really nasty. And keeping smiling while the sun gleams on your baldy head and your nose dribbles and your eyes look like little pink piggy eyes and your nails have to be tied on with sellotape.
I’ve decided the only way to deal with this is just to let it happen. Like everything else, it will pass.
Thank you for this thread! I think it does help a lot. Lyn, please tell us how you are doing. I finished my FEC a year ago and I am still feeling quite emotional, tired, scared and everything! Perhaps the problem is that we are all trying to be who we were before Dx and that cannot be. As my oncologist told me not very long ago: “Just imagine you are Sleeping Beauty. After the treatment, you have just woken up again and you think time hasn´t moved on…but it has, you are a year older and your body and mind have received a massive battering whilst the world around you has evolved following its normal course so you have to re-adjust to your new situation”.
I went back to work rather too early (because I was invincible and cancer was not going to rule my life) and I am finding that it was a mistake. I get very annoyed with the stress, the politics, etc. and I am really lost because I “woke up” after a year of crisis and massive changes in the organisation. Lost a promotion I was in line for before Dx and most of my colleagues have no idea what is to live with this, they just keep telling me “how brave I am”, “how fantastic I look” and “how great is to have me back” whilst they use the fact that I have a phased return to stab me in the back when I am not around! so, on top of the recovery, the joint pain, the tiredness and the mental and emotional battering in my personal life, I have to fight constantly at work…and yes, ladies! I am in a process of taking one of my managers to the union for discrimination on disability grounds! great!..at least that´ll make me feel like my combative old self!
My therapy is yoga (loads of it!) and, thank goodness, I have a great husband with buckets of love and patience when I become too low and unbearable! but, as everybody says, it does help to know that I am not alone in my own little world of unbearable joint pain, changeable moods, hot flushes and constant desire for a zimmer-frame at an age when you would not expect any of those. I have given up trying to be who I was 18 months ago (because that person did not have to live with the aftermath of cancer treatment) but I haven´t given up creating a new me adapted to the massive changes that we all go through and have to live with daily although I now know that it will take some time to get there and I will need to be very patient with myself. Hopefully our Fairy Godmothers will help us all to regain confidence in ourselves and live without fear.
Pir xxx
Just wanted to say to Lynn that you have lived through such horrendous thoughts, feelings and physical treatments that you should be patting yourself on the back. Look at what you have achieved and seriously consider the person that you have become. A strong woman who has dealt with the hardest blow - and I am not talking about someone who has had a spoilt little child throw abuse!
Get past the abuse and move on to have what YOU want and what YOU deserve.
Emotions are emotions and thats all - take time - go somewhere quiet or even just the sofa at the local starbucks, take a journal and write your hopes and aspirations. Then write exactly what your heart desires for 2010. List it all down. Even if you dont get all your wishes you just have to update or adjust the list with solutions.
You have a life to live - so live it - you deserve to and noone can live your life for you.
I wish you peace and happiness and most importantly the best of health.
Does any one find it hard to see their friends who they were close to before it all went off?
I know i am isolating myself and only seeing a few people and i am sure my main group of friends must think i have lost the plot! I know things need to change in my life but i dont know what to tackle? People are irritating me whining about work and debt and their kids and i have lost all empathy when previously i found helping others really satisfying…
My husband even said he is not the same man now and i wonder where all this change will take us??
Yes I feel that way, and i have in fact lost touch with a few people i thought of as friends. I especially find it difficult to see and meet up with people who i know will immediately say ’ oh you look well’ or ‘bet youre glad its all over’. Trouble is i don’t really know what i am expecting of people either, the people i have stayed close to accept the change in me and don’t expect me to be all singing and dancing. Hopefully the change that has been forced upon us by BC , will make us stronger.
I have become so intolerant, i accept other people have problems worries, but i just don’t want to know about them. Earlier in this thread, Roadrunner has posted a link, take a mo to look at it i found it really good and it made a lot of sense. It explains some of the feelings and thoughts i am/have been going through.
I have said to you before Evie you are an inspiration to me you truly are amazing dealing with BC and your little ones. I wouldn’t worry about people outside for the moment, i would take time with your hubby and the little ones and make time for yourselves.
take a look at that link
Dear Evie,
I think we are like you when you say nothing will ever be the same again. For us, I think it was the first time we had faced a major illness and the fact that we will not be around for ever.Our kids have also had their first inklings of that which can affect them a great deal.I suppose it could have the effect of making you either impatient with other peoples problems because they seem trivial, or more sympathetic. I have felt emotional over Christmas because last Christmas I was facing so many “unknowns” about how far the cancer had spread.
I am very impatient with people who want to come and stay.(I currently have my mother in law for six weeks till the end of January).I cannot imagine, ever, going to stay with someone who was recovering from treatment or a major illness. I cannot fathom what goes through her head. I mostly avoid people staying unless they are the type that will pitch in or cheer me up. I suppose I am trying to say that I really need people to stay at a distance while I recover, psychologically and physically. It takes time!
hello
this is such an interesting thread and there is such a lot of wisdom on it - I wish I had had access to it 12 years ago, I was terribly lost, emotionally, after treatment had finished. I never returned to my old self, as time went on, I found I had moved on from the person I had been. I became who I wanted to be, rather than the person I thought everyone else wanted me to be and yes, I lost some ‘friends’ along the way, and dumped some others lol, but I have a select circle of friends who know me warts and all. I have a stronger, better relationship with my oh and being ill affected how I brought up my children, in that I focused discipline etc on what mattered and made sure they learned who I am, rather than being ‘mammy’ - they were 9 and 11 when I was diagnosed. I show my love for family and friends very openly and that has brought me a lot of joy, but I only have in my life people who I want there. None of this came easily, and it took years.
What I’m trying to say, in my typical random way, is to hang in there - everyone here has had difficult and terrifying times - physically, mentally and emotionally, but we are still here and we should be proud of that - none of us asked for this but we are all dealing with it.
Like Rhian, I am in awe of you younger women who are dealing with young children as well as everything else. Not at all confident that I could have done that. You must feel so pissed off and robbed - you inspire a lot of we older women.
much love to you all - hope all goes well with you
monica x
Please may I join you?
I have been so positive and so upbeat through out my treatment that my nurse has said 'finally your grieving!'I find I can’t go a day without tears; small things set me off and big things p*ss me off.
Mimsy after major emergency surgery only two yrs ago my in laws landed on me for Xmas, they did sweet bugger all and on Xmas day my father law started on me (as usual); picking and insulting me -I walked away but this year I refused to house them and i refuse to tolerate his behaviour either. fab man agrees with me but due to the nature of his up bringing he is far from able to challenge his parents - even saying ‘don’t talk to my wife like that’ results in hell on earth, so we swallow it and try to laff later - this is getting harder to do since BC
evie - i find friends telling me ‘its all over’ so unpleasent and I’m beginning to either re-educate them or avoid them
I am no longer me - I always had a fragile self esteem but worked hard to to keep myself ‘up’. I don’t take the happy pills any longer because its one more poison in a system all poisoned out.
So will we ever be the same probably not but I hope we will be able to move on.
Btw lyn I cried for your posting - please, please seek help
I am finding this xmas very trying after months of solitude; of being left on my own as kids go to school and fab man work - I now have ahouse full of noise and activity - its really trying - how ungrateful am I!
much love to all xxxx rachel
Rach, its not ungrateful, i think we all do become quite solitary and enjoy our own company, its like a hug to ourselves. i know i spend ages going over stuff, someimes thinking things to death, but its how i deal with it all. Good on you putting your foot down re the inlaws, but having the emotional drain of having to do it is hard too and something you can do without thats for sure.
Well I set of on the first leg of my grand adventure ( clenching my fingers in the air like wallace and gromit:) in the morning , so leave for welsh wales at 7am…apparently there is snow forecast for the next few days, so it will be just me, the dogs and horse for New Years Eve…I have packed a bottle of bubbly and intent to see 2010 in if it kills me, and face the New Year and say bring it on.
rhi xx
Rach I had my in laws for christmas and they were both unwell so bloody miserable at times. Why i ask myself come and spoil our time then!!?? They bought shed loads of crud for the kids and did stockings- now in my house only santa does a stocking- so they immediatly irritated me. Ungrateful? Well no. I feel spending a fortune on stuff my kids dont need or want is a bloody waste given how others live. Why all the excess?? It doesnt make them love you any more. Also the icey silence when left with the MIL on my own gets my goat. SPEAK to me woman!! Ask how i am or anything just dont sit there staring at the wall rather that converse.
And friends that immediatly said “forget it all, put it behind you” have not been seen since! cant re educate them. Havent got the energy and if i am honest i want to move away and make new friends that dont know anything about me or how i was before.
evie - you are so right - as for your MIL well wot can I say - mine wont say much to me so we sit in silence its so ridiculous!
Rhian - good luck my sweet - no snow here yet but may be tomorrow!
I feel like the proverbial grumpy old woman who bladder has reached her eyes xxx
off to lock hornswith the left overs x