Just got back home from a Cancer Forum Meeting. I hate the "C" word with a vengence but its now firmly part of my life and I have difficulty coming to terms with saying the word.
Its nice to be able to discuss our views openly and honestly. We all cope with this illness in different ways and the word that gets bantered about most is "normal". To us we will never be normal ever again. I was "normal" before the illness. Now my normality is battling on everyday coping with five minutes at a time a time on a bad day and coping with each day as it comes when I feel good.
That is my normality.
I just hope that follow in this journey will have a better time of it and hopefully what I do will make a difference so that the mistakes I have come across don't happen to anyone else.
Best wishes to you all.
Fee
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The C word is a difficult one to master, how often do you use it? Do you say it until it no longer holds any dread or mystery, or do you treat it with the caution which you think it deserves? I've not had cancer myself, but I know quite a few who've had it and my father in law is currently suffering. He's had the cancer removed (hopefully) and we're just waiting to see what stage it was at. I don't see him as any different, he's just a person trying to get on with what life throws at him, the cancer doesn't make any difference to that. I know it does to him though. He's always been everyone's handy mate, now he's being looked after whilst he recouperates and he hates it.
ReplyDeleteI suppose we can't help what life throws at us, but we can make sure that we either let it spill all over us, or catch it and make it our own.
I wonder if coping with other people's attitude is harder than coping with your own sometimes? My next door neighbour's husband has had a tumour removed from his kidney; a scan revealed a shadow on his lung and now a further scan reveals a tumour in his neck (he is in great pain and thought he'd slipped a disc.) He is 49 years old and has three children, one of whom is a good pal of my son. We've all grown up together, had children together, celebrated New Years Eves together, been for walks in the country when the children were little etc. We're good neighbours rather than close friends but I find it so difficult to know what to say. I've made supper for them tonight. I don't know what else to do.
ReplyDeleteThe worst is coping with my own attitude to the illness. I am ok busy campaigning for others but when someone asks me about me I go to pieces breakdown and cry. I don't know why I get so emotional but I do.
ReplyDeleteIts really tough some days.
You seem like a person who cares so much about others that you are caught off guard when someone asks about you and how you're coping. From what I've known of you already you are driven by making others happy, you've given me comfort about my father-in-law's cancer and I bet you scoot around this place doing that for loads of people.
ReplyDeleteIt's just so hard to actually let ourselves be vulnerable. Essentially I think it's because we don't trust ourselves to be able to return to this place of calm if we lose control of it, so we don't let ourselves get upset.
When one of my close friends got breast cancer, some other friends were going to pieces and they asked howcome I was so calm. I said I was saving energy, I would get upset when it was really needed and hopefully it would never be needed. But I suppose in doing that we bottle it up ready for an explosion. I exploded at my Grandmother's funeral - floods of tears whilst everyone else was holding it together - most embarassing! So I suppose perhaps we both need to find a way to let these things out a bit more?