HHi will try and keep this short!!
i found out I had triple neg grade 3 stage 2 bc in March. had 6 lots of chemo. I have been lucky that my husband is in the marines and they allowed him paid time off to support me. Anyway I finished my chemo, had a mastcetomy in August, all was going ok, apart from the emotional side of losing a breast obviously!! Then at the beginning of sept my husbands mum gets rushed to hospital, they find out she has cancer of the womb and want to operate on her, but can’t as her calcium levels are too high and she has pe’s on her lungs. Obviously my husband is deverstated at this news on top of my condition.
A week after his mum is admitted to hospital I get a sever infection in my wound site, don’t get me wrong my husband has been there for every appointment, he has help drain the pus from my wound, so practical wise he’s been great. However he did not recognise the emotional effect the loss of a boob, fear of the infection getting worse and possibly being cut open again, the fear that the delay in starting rads would be enough timto for the cancer to come back and the having to watch his mum dying, before my eyes in the very same ward I had been in when I was neutrophic sepsis.
for the whole month his mum was ill, he has not contented with me emotionally at all,he would come home from the hospital and not acknowledge me, kiss me, or even just give me a hug to let me know he is still cares for me even at such a difficult time.
his mum passed away on 30th sept, and I just couldn’t face going to the funeral, emotionally I have been a total wreck, I explained to his father how i felt he said he understood, my husband said he would have to learn to tolerate it!! I’ve just doesn’t get how I’m feeling. Things have just got worse from there, apparently now his dad, brother Nd auntieAndre all saying they cannot understand why I didn’t go. I am being made to feel like a baddy, even though I have been living with cancer for the past 9 months!!
on the last day of my rads all au wanted to do was celebrate, my husband didn’t give a shit, couldn’t see what a big deal it was! When I told him how horrific e whol experience has been he even said, its not been that bad, some of it was ok!! Id like to see how he’d cope if he was told he had one of the most agressive cancer there can be, with no known drug treatment other than chemo, rads and surgery, that its got to 6 lymph nothe reliving for 4 months knowing they have seen a couple of blips on my liver and lung and not sure u til dafter chemo what they Re (they are nothing to worry now) then had e a breast hacked off, have an infection, ozz pus for 2 weeks, the be microwaved for abother 2 weeks!!!
Hes told me to get on with life, stop being so miserable and he can not forgive me for how I behaved over his mothers funeral!!
i have tried to explain that nothing can be changed, we were both in a extremely unusual sittuation and that we need to look to the future and take care of the people who are still here!!
Hes even had a moan because I want to celebrate Christmas, saying its the first Christmas without his mum and he doesn’t want Christmas taming down his throat!! We have two kids, tell them that! I have tried to explain, if we put Christmas off for that reason, then maybe next year he will be looking at spending his first Christmas with no wife…as none of us know how long we have!! Make the most of each day with the ones that are left…
BUT HE STILL DOESN’T GET IT
hes more concerned about making sure his brotheArendt dad are ok, not his wife, mother of his kids…our family is falling apart and he’s more worried about everyone else.
anyway sorry for the long rant
does anyone else feel totally alone in this shit situation and if so how do you cope?? Or any suggestions on how I can get through to him?
Dear Chatty katty, what an awful awful year you’ve been through. Your whole family has been through hell, this will turn the toughest and closest families upsidedown. Just take a second to imagine your husband at the centre of all this, a strong military man, being pulled into the cartwheels of your illness, then being pulled into the cartwheels of his mum and family and actually losing his mum. I can imagine him as a person standing at the top of the family, and strong ropes are attached to him from every family member from below, pulling at him in every direction. He’s tried to be strong for all, he cannot take sides, he cannot get too emotionally involved for fear that he himself will fall?
This has been a rapid rollercoaster, now you all need to pause for breath and recover, this can take a long time; Dont worry about Christmas, keep it simple and stress free. Start getting your husband to open up (men see this as a sign of weakness) Make him feel safe when he talks his feelings through with you, and then maybe you can both start being emotionally there for each other again, please please try and get time alone together, go out for meals, court each other again. The worse avenue that any of you can now tread is loss of communication–I know this from personal experience, as I did not communicate my fears and feelings to my hubby through my treatment and i even pushed him away from attending appointments etc. I felt i had to be strong, but i now know that this was wrong and for us to get close again has taken a lot of hard work and communication has been the best power in all of this.
Thank you truddles, I have tried a weekend away, meals out etc, but he’s just of the attitude that a weekend away won’t solve anything…I have explained that I know that but we need to make little steps, but he’s just even attempting that. As for communication…well there is none, I don’t anything that is going on in his head for life at the moment, yet I have opened up my feelings for all to see. I really cannot see a future anymore.
I think he is really really scared of losing you too. Tell him you’ve got no plans to pop off this planet just yet!
The negativity of feeling there is no future, somehow infringes on the personality to stop trying/ stop aiming for goals/ stop caring.
I feel that you do really care for your husband, it comes out in your words. You may not know whats in his head so just be in his presence/ just quietly be there/ if hes not up to chatting then make sure you show you’re happy to just be in his company.
The future has an horizon which is too far to reach, for most of us.
“Give us each day our daily bread” (The Lords Prayer)
I have seen you supporting others (including me) so many times yet, all along, all this was happening to you. What a nightmare. My OH’s mum died of lung cancer a year before my diagnosis and he was an angry, withdrawn man for about a year. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been for him if both happened at once. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that there is no limit to how much sh*t life can throw at you at one time. Truddles makes really good pionts about men and fear. I saw a post in “families and friends” called “partner not responding…” It is not about your problem, but somehow it is. There is a post by a man called larger bloke, which gives a little insight into the male psyche.
Now I have to have more chemo, my dad has been diagnosed with prostrate cancer and my mum is being investigated for womb cancer. My hubbie is being fantastic, but he is drinking too much and I fear all the time that he will not be able to take it any more. Have you considered couple counselling? My hubbie would never consider such a thing normally but he has said he would, which took me by suprise totally as he is quite an unreconstructed macho type. I am going by myself at the moment but the therapist is willing to offer joint sessions if we want them. I got it from MacMillan via my my BCN and did not have to wait or pay. Even if he never goes at least I am getting it.
Christmas - I am finding this hard myself for reasons that I find too painful to write about publicly (remember there is no limit to the sh*t life will give you) so it will be small but the tree is up. Just keep it low key rather than ignoring it. I too feel that there is a chance that I might not be here next year (although my logical self knows that even if I have extensive secondaries I should be here next year) so I know what you mean about trying to enjoy it now.
I think you want to make it work with him so hang in there and try anything and keep trying. Also - don’t underestimate the “finishing treatment” effect on yourself - there are plenty of threads on here about how scary that is.
I’ve been in therapy since being dragged into this club that none of us wanted to join.
My therapist has helped me to show me ways containing cancer to my breast and not allowing it to consume and contaminate the whole of me and my life. This is what this effing crap does, it tries it’s best to permeate every aspect of who we are to the deepest negative degree. We are more than our diagnosis/treatment and that is not to say what we have been through is any walk in the park. Don’t we know the truth? Those of us who had a mastcetomy go through a moruning and enormous adjustment to understanding how our amputation affects us as women, not to mention the pain and new way of living we have to accept. I’m doing my best not to let cancer win and it’s a fight. A small example: I have a son who is clever at grammar school. He received a achievement award eariler this year and my head told me he got it because the school felt sorry for him because they know what he went through with me. He got this on his own merit and I’m consumed with dealing with adjusting to my new physicalness and reality. I know this is no where near the same as losing your mil to cancer, it’s an example of the skewed thinking that comes with the trama we live with.
I’m grateful for my therapist and for her, I’m the first client she has delt with who is going through serious illness. It’s been a learning curve for both of us and she has helped me understand so much that my husband could never offer, not even my oncologist.
All my supprot and understanding to you Kat, to all of us.
LB, x
Oh dear… there are times when you feel beat…and i suppose Christmas is gonna be one of those times. i was hoping that having the kids at home and not having all the associated pressure of getting three little kids to school with pack lunches and all their associated tennis rugby football stagecoach kits every day would take the pressure off. Instead I am sat at home with chronic back ache worrying that the cancer has taken over me (probably only stress i bl**dy hope).
Why is this…?
But then I hear that I am not the only one and a lot of us feel very low at times… in pain, on drugs - it would undoubably have an effect on most people…
…but we have to fight!!!
sending lots of love and hoping that we can all support each other - only we know what we are going through.
xx
Spot on Mandy!
FYI, wanted to offer this info to my triple negative pink ribbon sisters: Patricia Prijatel is the author ofSurviving Triple-Negative Breast Cancerand The Magazine from Cover to Cover_, both published by Oxford University Press, and the founder and editor of the Positives About Negative blog. She is the E.T. Meredith Distinguished Professor Emerita, the former director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and founder of the E.T. Meredith Center for Magazine Studies at Drake University._
Thanks everyone for your support. I am going to go to counselling and so is hubby. He is starting to have a few more good days which is encouraging. Christmas has been ok, obviously a lot of it has been spent with his dad supporting him. I’m getting on with stuff and just waiting for him to catch up In his own time. I start the moving forward class in the new year, also the bacs up programme all referred by bc nurse. I’ve also signed myself up for a photography course, which I’ve always wanted to do but never had the time…see there are benefits to bc!!
I have been reading the surviving triple negative breast cancer book, its pretty interesting. Plus my lovely dad who has been desperately searching the Internet for a cure to tnbc has been in contact with a chap in USA who attending the big San Antonio breast cancer symposium recently held. Bless him.
i hope you all had a good Christmas and here’s to a better new year than the last X