This blog is my (hopefully therapeutic) attempt to explore the sometimes overwhelming emotional challenges of navigating the choppy and often tumultuous waters of the cancer diagnosis of a loved one.
When my husband was diagnosed with bowel cancer I was devastated. My eldest brother told me that I needed to ‘steer the ship’ for the family while my husband sought treatment. I thought this was an apt metaphor coming from an ex- navy man. Steering the ship seemed like a manageable task, but I was soon dispelled of this illusion as our cancer Journey began.
The most difficult thing is dealing with the pressure to stay positive as every well meaning friend and relative advises, when emotionally you feel way out of your depth and so overwhelmed. The scariest part to wrestle with is the terrifying feeling that if you go under so does everyone else.
We are only about 3 months down the line so perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, but I already feel that the Ship wanders off course with alarming regularity, and I am alternatively in and out of my depth, struggling to stay afloat. What did I expect when we embarked on this unwanted journey? I need to go back to the beginning.
My husband is fortunate that his cancer was found through the home screening program that people over sixty can choose to opt into. This time however he got the results back quicker than usual and they requested a second sample. Very quickly he was sent an appointment for a colonoscopy and that’s were we were told the dreaded news that they had found what looked like a cancerous growth on one left side of his colon and another benign polyp on the other side. Normally, we were informed the benign polyp would have been removed during the colostomy, but as it was in a delicate area just above his appendix it would require surgery along with the cancerous growth.
This was all subject to the usual biopsies and scan. The worst part was, as many cancer sufferers report, the seemingly interminable waiting for test results, the huge uncertainty and above all the inescapable knowledge that cancer is an unpredictable illness, a fact that even the most ardent advocates of the staying positive brigade, cannot dispute. Anyway before long my husband found himself undergoing a major operation on both sides of his colon which lasted 7 hours. The surgery was robotic and the surgeons very pleased with the outcome. We were happy because my husband was lucky enough to escape having a colostomy bag as colon cancer patients frequently end up with one either temporarily, or for some very unlucky individuals permanently. As this had been one of my husbands biggest fears it was a huge relief.
We were not so pleased however when we learned a couple of weeks after the operation that of the the twenty-three lymph nodes removed during the operation ( a good harvest according to the surgeon, they normally only remove about twelve ) two of them were cancerous. It was only at this point that they diagnosed my husbands cancer as being stage three. This was a huge shock because the scan before the operation barely showed anything because tumour was so small. We hoped along with the doctors that it must be an early cancer which was at this stage unlikely to have spread.
So what were my expectations of ‘steering the ship’ at this stage? I decided I would just focus on my family and especially my husband. Firstly, we had to cancel our month long planned trip to Indonesia in April so there would be no delay in his treatment. My husband was really disappointed over this but for me it was ironic. Though we had done a couple of adventurous trips in the past few years, to Laos, Malaysia, Uganda and Nicaragua I was particularly anxious over this one because there had been a couple of natural disasters in the last few years and a recent plane crash (the plane crash worried me because that is the way we would have traveled between the various Indonesian Islands). Anyway, despite my anxieties l would not have dreamed of cancelling and the worse reason I can think of for doing so would be my husband been diagnosed with cancer. As that was the reason for our eventual last minute cancellation I felt guilty for all my fretting and worrying. The saying ‘be careful what you wish for’ kept running through my mind.
After we cancelled our holiday I decided to concentrate on making my garden pretty so my husband could recuperate after his operation and during the long months of chemotherapy ahead. I thought that was all I needed to worry about in the immediate future and that I could confidently ‘steer the ship’ through relatively calm waters. Of course life is never so simple and I failed to anticipate the storms cancer related, and non cancer related that life would throw at us, to steering us of course.
Rereading this last paragraph I wonder if I am being dramatic, as my husband cancer is not terminal (his diagnosis is stage 3), and I know thousands of people around the world are going through far more than we are. But I am trying to convey how disastrous it all felt to me, how it seemed as if our lives were falling apart uncontrollably.
The worse thing was not being able to control future fears. The most overwhelming fear of all, and one that I felt most challenged by, was the possibility of failing to be positive for my husband and family when they most needed it, a fear that I found was constantly reinforced by well meaning family and friends around me, particularly those who had never had to deal with a close family member being diagnosed with cancer. The message coming through loud and clear was, that failure to remain positive meant the possibility of a sinking ship, a fearful and unthinkable disaster. No pressure then as we prepared to negotiate the treacherous and unpredictable waters ahead.......
