ive just had my post radiotherapy 6 week check(i didnt have chemo just wle and snb0. onc says everything is healing well will see him again in 6 months, i can now go swimming, use deodorant etc etc and what did i do? blubber! i feel so low its unreal. I WANT TO SHKE MYSELF OUT OF THIS BUT CANT SEEM TO GET MOVING. X
SUE
Hi Sue,
If it helps any, what you are feeling is quite normal and happens to most of us. There’s another thread on here called “What happens after treatment is finished” where the ladies are at the same stage and discussing exactly the same thing. It might help to have a look there.
Good luck, Jan xx
Yep i felt like that. Cried for weeks on end and didnt really get a grip for almost 6 wks! Its grief in a sense and you have to ride it out.
Good luck
It passes and its normal
X
I’ve posted on your tiredness again thread and from my experiences the same applies to this feeling too. It’s like you bottle it all up to get through the treatment and put on a brave face and then it has to come out at some point eventually. My time was about 18 months after diagnosis and my consultants said it was quite normal even that long after diagnosis.
Patience is a virtue with the recovery !!!
Liz
Sue, my op was the same as yours and I’m only just in to rads, and although I know it’s going well and things are as good as they get with this, I feel as though I;m two people…the one who just has to get on with things for the sake of the children, and the one whose every moment is filled by the word cancer.
I’m just hoping that as time goes on, as with some of the other ladies, my mind is less taken up with the C word, after all, I’m one of the lucky ones.
Aw Tally.
I know exactly how u are feeling, I also feel as if I am two people now, one with the cancer terrified , and then the real me, my only consolation apart from being here is that the real me is peeping through more often now. I am 12 months post op
its a long haul emotionally isnt it
take care x
I’m so pleased I picked up this thread as I was starting to think I was going mad!
Finished my rads on Weds and was crying like a baby, couldn’t work out why I wasn’t jumping for joy. Yes my skin is sore and I have an awful sore nipple and I seem to be knackered after doing the smallest of things but I should be happy and I’m not…why?
I don’t actually think that I have cried that much through the last 6 months so maybe now is the time that I have to let go??
But at least I now know I’m not going mad…just been really ill…
phillippa x
I’m glad i found this thread too. I finished rads on 25th Feb, everything went o.k. a bit sore and not too tired. Then last week the tiredness hit me like a brick!
I feel really down and guilty because I’m not feeling happy that it’s ‘all over’.
I’m normally a very happy go lucky person and am annoyed with myself for feeling like this.
I am starting back to work next week on a staged return and am getting a bit concerned that I’ll be too knackered 
although I know they will be very understanding. It was my choice to go back as I felt I needed to get back to normality.
I’ve got the ‘2 people’ feeling too. I also feel guilty about being short with the people who tell me how ‘lucky’ I am - grrr!
Let’s hope we all start feeling brighter soon
gill x
Do you know ladies, I was fine until about 3 months after I finished Herceptin. I was sitting watching TV with my OH (nothing about illness or cancer, just a nice film) and I suddenly said it him “oh, I’ve been really ill haven’t I” and he just looked at me and replied “I don’t think you realise how ill you have really been”. It was like a huge bolt of lightening and it was after that that I went for counselling. It truly was a very horrible moment, feeling like that - I thought everything was coming in on me.
I’ve got my last of 8 chemos coming up this Friday, and have been tearful in anticipation of the relief that the end is in sight! Even though I still have rads and a year of herceptin to come. I’ve been relatively well through chemo, but I still haven’t been ‘me’, and I can’t wait to start to regain my energy, hair and life back.
I’m crying 3 or 4 times a day at the moment and my mind won’t stop whirring…
I have the same ‘two person’ feeling that everyone else talks about, the cancer me and the old me, trouble is the old me won’t ever be back again as I will always be the one who had/has cancer.
I’ve been very good at only showing a happy person to other people, I show them what I think they want to see. I find myself laughing and joking at things but inside I feel as though I shouldn’t be laughing at anything and that makes me feel guilty.
I have even found some of the postings on this site that has been such a comfort to me hard to read but I also find it almost impossible not to come on here and read them. I can’t read the postings from ladies who are so poorly as I end up in tears.
I am almost 2 weeks post rads I have had my appointment through to see the oncologist on the 21 April but I still feel scared and uncertain, can’t believe that this feeling will ever go away.
People seem to now think that I should be feeling fine and should be getting back to normal, only my OH knows how hard that is. I tried to do some gardening at the weekend,I only managed 20 mins, how I am then going to manage going to work even part time?
Sorry for the rant ladies…just can’t seem to get over this at the moment.
x
This is so hard to explain to other people as it isn’t a rational thing, but a combination of treatment SEs and the whole experience. Little things can make you really overreact.
I was really upset a few weeks ago when I last saw my onc as he spent the whole appointment telling me how lucky I am. I know I am ucky compared with many of the people he must see, but two things really grated with me.
One was his response to my experience of SEs of Tamoxifen - he said that there is scientific evidence that the drug is most effective in those who suffer the worst SEs. Funny how that didn’t really make me feel better because I am facing 5 years of those SEs - they have changed me and my life so I can’t be the ‘normal’ me.
Then he went over a review of my treatment and prognosis - which is very good as I had Tubular cancer and I found it early - and he told me to finish the rads and then get on with my life and forget cancer because I will now be in the same position I was before I had cancer. Does that make sense to any of you? Rationally he was talking about my risk of getting cancer again, but I don’t see how it would be possible to forget it and act like it never happened.
I came away from that appointment feeling like I was not really worthy of his time - that he had far more important really ill people to deal with. I have to see him again on the 12th April and I’m really not looking forward to it. I need him to take me seriously over the Tamoxifen SEs and find a solution. That’s why I’m not happy.
E xx
Had my last chemo 18th December, & all along hung onto the fact that it would be all over by Christmas day. It was touch & go whether it went ahead, but it did, so I was relieved but I cried all the way home, & all evening, & I think the whole weekend(this was on a Friday). I think it was just such an anti-climax, I live alone & felt like there should be something to mark the occasion but there was nothing, just me, on my own.
How stupid, I’m crying again just writing this.
Arranged to meet a friend for a drink after last rads though, so that if I did cry I’d know I had to stop.
Since then I can cry at the drop of a hat, & I used to be known at work as ‘her who never cries’.
Divy this makes perfect sense to me. Dealing with the treatment is all consuming, and I think a lot of us train ourselves not to think too far ahead - just deal with what is in front of us. Then when the treatment stops there’s a huge void, lots of time with probably not enough energy to fill it with displacement activity, and you can’t avoid dealing with the bigger issues. Also I can imagine friends and family expecting everything to go back to normal. I’m still in the middle of treatment, but thank you all for bringing this issue up - I can well imagine finding this stage very difficult.
I can totally understand the not thinking too far ahead. When I was diagnosed my sister kept saying “oh, in a year’s time this will all be over and you will be cured” and it really did my head in. All I could focus on was getting through the next treatment, then the next and so on. Even my breast care nurse said it is often easier to cope if you handle it like that. My sister lives abroad, but was here on holiday when I was diagnosed. She was due to return home the following day and couldn’t wait to get on the plane as she runs from everything. She then went into denial and when she paid a visit it was like nothing was going on, yet all the evidence was there i.e. no hair, looking really poorly and on one of her visits I was in an isolation room. I was on mega doses of steroids and she turned up, looked at me and said “oh, aren’t you fat at the moment”. I have given up on her now.
Cherub I am so sorry - how awful to have such an insensitive sister. I think this disease teaches us to be very philosophical about other people and their reactions - I have to say I have been extremely lucky with my family and friends, but I do find so far I can just rise above the odd silly comments with a wry smile, as day to day irritations seem so unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I really do massively appreciate the friends that have been superb - and it’s not always the ones you expect - but most of them have had some family or professional experience of serious illness, and have a better idea of what we go through.
Theres no way this disease doesn’t change your outlook on life and the way you feel about family and friends, I have come to look on things so differently that I even surprise myself on the way BC has changed me. But maybe happiness straight after this illness isn’t something that we should expect but something that will come on us unexpectedly when we manage to stop thinking about it all the time.
Until that happens I’m trying to think of the following.
Small irritations are just that - small - and not worth worrying about.
Hurtful things that others might say are their problem not mine.
How much I appreciate the friends that have been there for me through this especially from those that I least expected it.
My love and admiration for my OH who I never thought would cope with my illness but who has been there every step of the way.
The love of my sister who even though she is not in the best of health has supported me and continues to support me.
Realising that my sons are now ‘grown men’ who don’t need me to shield them from life as I should have known that the way I brought them up made would make them able to cope pretty well with whatever comes along.
That each day is a blessing and a joy no matter what the weather or people or anyone says or does and that one day hopefully sooner rather than later I will be able to wake up and not think about cancer but about my future and how bright it really can and is going to be.
Live for now. Not for tomorrow or yesterday. Now. You don’t know what will happen tomorrow, and yesterday is gone, so all you have is this moment so enjoy it. (Cathy Kelly)
x
tippy1 - Exactly the same thing happened to me at my post rads check and I think my female oncologist was taken aback and thought I would be over it by now, as I had held it together during our previous meetings. She recommended speaking to my BCN but I feel that this has all been such a huge shock, I don’t think we will ever ‘get over it’.
finty - I so agree with your comment…“Then when the treatment stops there’s a huge void, lots of time with probably not enough energy to fill it with displacement activity, and you can’t avoid dealing with the bigger issues.” Feeling down is very draining.
Ann x
Forgot to say having my post rads check 3.15 today !
Will let you all know if I cry, but hope I won’t as my choir are singing tonight at 7.30 & red puffy eyes is so not a cool look.