3 month anniversary

trying to get back to work!

2010-12-14T07:47:39Z

I haven't blogged in a while, talking on chat and to the penguin mainly, but I am feeling the need to have a really good rant! So here I go.

It will be 5 months on friday since I lost my husband to this horrible disease, since it crept up on us so no one expected it and by the time it was found he had no chance to fight.

I went to see the GP last week as I needed to extend my sick note into the new year, when there were tentative plans for me to return to work. I beleive that I have now got to the point in this grieving process where having no focus, no expectations of me and therefore nothing to do has become counter-productive, so I was gearing myself up for the idea of returning to work in january. no point going back before this season is hard enough without adding more difficult situations and dealing with too many celebrating people. So I explained all this to my GP, and I also explained when asked that yes I do still find it very hard in the mornings, my sleep pattern is very poor BUT I am coping with the day to day much better, I am talking about things that I might do over the comming months, run the 10km for macmillan, enrol to do a certificate in madical education for work. I explained that i realised that going back to work as a doctor in a hospital is going to be really hard, but that waiting any longer now i felt would not help. I wanted to go back to work with limited hours and limited resposibility at work and build up depending on how I cope.

My GP sat and listened to all this seeming to agree, then took a breath and said, He felt I was still very flat!, that he was worried that I was becomming clinically depressed! and that he wanted to start me on SSRI's (antidepressants in plain english). I was blown side ways. Of course i am flat!!! My husband, the man I spent the last 131/2 years with died less then 5 months ago! the man I have spent my whole adult life with! The man I wanted to have children with but never got the chance, I have probably lost the chance now to ever have a family, at 32 years old I am staring into the abyss of a potentially very long life alone, sure I have my parents right now but sadly they will go some day, my sister has her own husband and her own life and hopefully her own children at some point. So I am sorry I I seem flat to you Mr GP but I am having to cope with all that and the flash backs of whatching tha man I love dying, knowing he was dying fighting hard no to but not being given the chance. And the constant reminder that when I feel this sorry for myself, everything that I have lost is nothing compared to what he lost, he lost the chance to live, he lost the chance to see his daughter become a woman, he lost the chance to be a proper dad to the children we wanted to have. He never got the chance to see egypt on the honeymoon we could never take, the place that had facinated him all his life, the trip of a lifetime so close but so very very far away! He never got to celebrate his 40th birthday, insted marked by his loved ones crying and placing flowers around his tree in the cemetary. He lost so much more then me.

And yet it seems that my attempts to carry on are going to be thwated by my GP, who insted of writing a one month sick note and asking to see me again in a month, has written effectively a two month sick note till the end on january. So now I can't start to work unless he retracts it.

My councillor agrees with me that it is time to think about returning to work. I think the GP is actually trying to cover his own arse! He gave me all the shpeel about the responsibilities of our job and I think he is worried he'll get the blame if anything were to go wrong! But much as what I have written here so far has been very low, i am blowing off steam, and I am coping and my brain is functioning and although I understand what he is saying i am not stupid, I don't want to go back too early and cause me to have a full breakdown or miss something in a patient at work (oh no not like they missed the widespread metastatic cancer in my husband for months on end, despite him comming with abdo pain time after time!!!!!). But if it is done right, slow and with limited responsibility for a few months I think I am about ready. To top it off the doctor in the occupational health department also agrees with me! but it is my GP who has the responsibility for my sick note, so i'm stuffed.

Well to show him, and to give me something that a young single person can do, I have joined a gym! Big step for an over weight, exercise phobic like me, but the person I was has to change and has changed. I can never be the same and as I said before I plan to run 10km for macmillan, not till May though.

I am sorry if this has upset people, i needed to rant and blow off steam and emotion.

an update

2010-10-31T07:35:43Z

15 weeks yesterday.

I thought I would blog to tell people that i am doing better. I know through the weeks I have posted some very black, low and at time despirate posts and i am greatful for those who offered their support in response, even thoughs for whom it was very distressing to read.

I am functioning more like a human again at the moment. I ncredably fragile still, and I can find myself crying all of a sudden but functioning through it. The flash of a smile as a pleasantry to people i meet in a shop ect has returned, not heartfelt but there. i think it is still sometime before any form of laughter or happiness is felt within but things are changeing even if in some ways I wish they wouldn't. I still find the question 'how are you' difficult to answer, and i can't give the expected 'fine' that is the knee jerk answer given by most people in day to day life. coping with the now is becoming the normality, but when the future pops into my head thats when it all goes wrong, and being human it just keeps popping in there.

anyway this was ment to be possitive, about how i am doing better. I am going to councilling weekly, this website helps alot and I am trying to make a point of seeing friends, nothing big, just a cuppa or a bite to eat (at one of our houses) but it is still social contact. I have made a huge leep for me next week, i've booked a hair cut, i know to some that sounds silly but I have avoided having to visit a hairdresser since before mark was diagnosed, so my hair has not been cut since April. I could not stand the hairdresser conversation, 'been anywhere nice this year', 'going anywhere nice this weekend?', 'are you working?', I have avoided my old hairdresser as if she remembers she will last have met me when i was all excited about getting married, going on honeymoon ect. Alot has changed that i don't want to talk about in a hairdressers, so i will be cold, give short answers and may seem a little rude but i will do it, another little hurdle to overcome. At least then the hair will be shorter, easier to manage and wash and dry.

I babysat for friends last night, and coped even though they insisted on a bedtime story and the the boy, aged about 6 decided to not go to sleep, playing test the babysitter. oh well, kids they are innocent and don't understand the bigger picture so you can't get upset they just need looking after. sweet really.

I think I have rambled enough for now.

Thankyou again for all those who have supported me this far, I am soo greatful. I won't promise there won't be anymore black days but I hope to post more possitive ones too.

3 months

2010-10-17T18:06:29Z

well today is 3 months since my husband, Mark, lost his fight to stay alive.

I am still here. And the world is still turning. Not sure how these things are happening as it still feels as though it all should have stopped on that day. the sun keeps rising and falling and he is still not here.

I have accepted that I am still here and he would want to be, but as he can't i must go on as he wanted, but is not easy, it is the hardest thing I have ever done. Just existing.

My life is not back onto any sort of track and I am not sure when it might be and what track it will be when it does. But I have things I need to do. Things I promised him I would do because he could not. The Holiday to ancient Egypt that should have been our honeymoon and his holiday of a life time. and the things on the bucket list he also could not do because things happened so fast. I will do them but they will wait a little longer, I can't face them yet.

One thing that I have noticed other then that everyone else seems to be able to go back to there previous lives so quickly, is that everyone wants to concentrate on me and me rebuilding my life, but that actually makes me feel guilty. I don't want any of this to be about me, it about him, the beautiful man who has gone.

I am slowly starting to do things again, house work, shopping, eating, talking. Not fast enough for some, my work has now requested that I go to an appointment with occupational health, they say to make sure I have enough support but I think it is them trying to see how long i am going to be off and how to get me back to work! For reasons I have explained before I don't think that is about to happen very quickly, I hope I can face my work again because Mark was so proud of me, but time will tell.

My darling Mark I know you didn't want to put me through this. You are so deeply missed.

grief, feeling pointless

2010-10-04T08:40:32Z

please don't read this if you want to read something possitive.

It has been 2 months and 17days since my beautiful loving and brave husband passed away. It will be 4 months tomorrow since our wedding day, which makes it 4 months and 1 week since his diagnosis, which was terminal from the start, do not pass go do not collect £200. No hope of cure, but he was still so determined to fight it and it was all taken from him so fast it feels so unfair.

And now there is me, left behind, alone. feeling horribly guilty I didn't see how ill he was, wondering how much difference a few weeks or even months earlier diagnosis would have made to the outcome. Would we have felt less cheated if he had had the chance to fight? I don't know, and I never will. He was soo brave. I miss him soo much.

I am now struggling to see what the purpose for me is. I have always had a strong feeling in my life that I had a purpose. I worked hard and became a doctor from a less than privalaged background, I commited to my husband many years ago, we had just not done the wedding, but we were married in every other sense for over 11 years. I always thought that if you work hard, are good to people, honest and fair that you got what you deserved. Well that theory has been blown right out of the water hasn't it!!

I am now no longer a wife (as such of course I still feel married), I am not a mother ( because beeing responsible we were planning that for the next step, now my carrer is progressing well) and I am not fit to be a doctor. I ask you would you trust someone who could not see that right under their noses. I can make all sorts of excuses for why I didn't see it comming but they dont help, it still boils down to the fact I didnt. so what am I now? why do I get up in the morning? I don't really know at the moment.

I know I am having a bad day, that I have not felt quite like this every day, but it is certainly like this more if I am alone. and unfortunately I now live alone. family have been very supportive but they can't always be here, because here is 110 miles from home. I only have a few friends in this city.

I see other peoples possitive posts and feel that maybe there is a way through but then I realise no matter how hard I work or how possitive I try to be he won't be comming back.

The councilling starts

2010-09-28T09:55:15Z

I had my first councilling session yesterday. I did not know what to expect whether we would go through the whole story or what. It was a bit of an assessment visit, she mainly asked me about what I hoped to get from it and a few details of my support network. She was sure that councilling was a good idea and that we should start on weekly basis. I didn't feel that I gained anything from it but I guess that was not the point of the first visit.

I know they can't work miricles, they can't put htings right. Nothing will ever bring Mark back. Though sometimes it is still hard to beleive he has gone and I will never see him again. His pictures I now have on the fire place feel like they look at me, a bit like in Harry potter.

I know I need to find coping stratergies, because it will never feel alright what happened to him. I have to go back to work sometime, though everyone I have spoken to agrees not yet, probably not for quite some time yet. I do feel a little like I am letting my collegues down but I feel i would be unsafe to work at the moment.

I know councilling works for some and not others, but so far I have found it good to talk about things, the problem comes when I am very low and if you really tell the people around you exactly what is going through your mind they tend to get very scared. I made that mistake with my sister. I think she wanted to put me on suicide watch after that conversation. I care about her and she has enough to deal with, she wasn't as close of course but she lost her brother in-law too and has big stresses at home with her husband so I feel bad for saying those things to her. She said that she was scared by them but was glad that she could be there for me to talk to. I guess the problem with councilling is that it is a fixed session and not nessesarily there when you really need to off load.

I will give it a good try, like I say I need to find a way of coping. I wonder how it felt for anyone else when they started councilling.

councilling

2010-09-22T12:18:52Z

I should be going to my first councilling session today, so as I should have been alone I arranged for my sister to come and stay with me last night so I would have some support if I felt emotional afterwards. But after she arrived yesterday afternoon I got a call from the councillor oppologising but cancelling my appointment at short notice and remaking it for next monday. She said she had a referral but equally was supprised to find I was not working, considering everything that happened and how quickly it happened this year I would have thought it would be supprising if i felt I could work yet. It's not like I sit behind a desk and shuffel papers. I do wonder how much of what happened is actually on that referral. Obviously Mark has died, that is the crux of the problem but there is a lot more to it, I have a feeling I am going to have to tell her the whole story.

I am still not sure how councilling is going to work, they can't make it better, no one can, but I hope they can help me get my head arround dealing with the fact I have survived and I need to carry on with life somehow. To cope with the fact hes gone and can't come back no matter how hard I prey for it. I don't know how anyone can do that, but I am willing to give it a try.

I will now have to deal with starting councilling on my own, my sister will be back at work and my dad needs to go away on buisness so can't be here either.

I feel so guilty today

2010-09-19T09:01:21Z

I woke this morning and all I can feel is guilty and sorry.

Guilty because my husband was dying and I couldn't even tell. I know he was ill and I knew he was getting worse, but I didn't know he was dying. I didn't support him like I would have felt shit and I thought it would all get better and he was being a little lazy (at first anyway). He kept saying sorry, he hadn't done the house work etc but he had just slept in. I thought he had got into bad habbits being out of work.

I never took him to the GP, I knew that he didn't always make things as clear to others as he thought he had. He thought that people would just take it that if he said he had pain, he had pain and that he didn't need to make a fuss about it they should listen to him. even when he clearly wasn't getting anywhere fast I didn't go with him. He was an adult Man, I shouldn't need to hold his hand. At least that is what I kept telling myself. Too busy at work saving lives!!! I should have been looking right under my nose, the one life that matter the most.

And why didn't they take him at his word, why did it take over 21/2 months for the ultrasound he had been promised to actually happen. If they didn't know what was wrong why didn't they repeat the blood tests to see if the iron deficiency anaemia had settled. Why didn't they weigh him when he said he had been loosing weight even though he had put it down to his new diagnosis of diabetes. Its not like he ever went to the GP with crap. He had become scared of going to the GP because every time he did in the last 2 years he had got a new diagnosis, hypothyroidism, obstructive sleep apnoea, diabetes, let alone the lectures about his weight, he knew and he hated it and I was giving him enough jip about that anyway.

Guilty because he said to me do you think it could be cancer?, NO i said, your too young, you have had clear endoscopies from both ends, cancer of what, theyve looked. He Knew he was really ill didn't he.

Guilty because I wanted to hug im and hold him in hospital before he died but he was in so much pain if moved and so comfortable at rest that I couldn't really, and I wish I had. I just held his hand and put an arm around his chest sometimes.

I want him back and I can't make it up to him now. There is nothing I can do.

I am to be a godmother

2010-09-15T16:38:08Z

only 81/2 weeks, but things are changing.

I hate to admit it but I do feel different, the pain is still there but a bit less raw. The appetite that had gone is back (i'll have to watch that sweet tooth). And things keep changing, it makes me feel so bad that Mark will not see them.

I am going to be the Godmother to my best friends baby girl. She was born only 3 weeks before mark died but he did manage to see her. She has changed so much in such a short time. I had assumed that her sister and sister-in-law would be godmothers, but I am so proud to be asked. Her mum would have been my other bridesmaid if she weren't heavily pregnant and her dad was the best man. We have been friends since we were 5, and although I tried to show my support even from a different city I now know how unsupportive I really was when she lost her mum at a young age, whilst I was at uni.

I went striaght on line and ordered the tiny feet paperweight that me and Mark had seen and said we would buy as a christening present. I hope if I tell them that they will like it and not get upset about it. I wish Mark could be there too, but we will have to accept him as her guardian angel godfather.

It is a very good thing and I am so Proud to be asked and accept, I hope they understand why maybe I didn't sound a enthusiastic as maybe I might have if the circumstances had been different.

my sisters birthday

2010-09-14T13:44:01Z

today is my sisters birthday, she does not want to celebrate. She has been there for me as much as possible and her husband has had a bit of a nervous breakdown since my Mark passed away. It was not solely due to what happened to Mark as it was building even before we found out he was seriously ill but I am sure it didn't help.

I understand her feelings but feel that she needs a day for her. she has been worrying so much about me and her husband that i am now starting to worry about her. I wanted her to have a nice if understated day today so I bought her her favorite sweets (haribo!) and a card and gift voucher for some new clothes. Unexpectedly they came to stay at my house last night, I had spent sat and sunday night at thiers to stop me being too alone but expected to be alone last night and tonight. However her husband had the idea they could come to mine last night on the way to going to his parents today. I wasn't going to say no. But it is her birthday this morning and I can't get up in the morning without crying yet. so I came downstairs to find them both already up and drinking tea. I tried so hard not to cry but I couldn't. I didn't want to cry at her on her birthday, i know she understands but it's still not what she needed. She opened her card and of course i had written in it how much we had valued her support in the last few months, both me ands Mark, of course that set us both off. Maybe I should have just left it at happy birthday.

Yesterday my sisters husband found out he had got the job he was hoping for so that they could move back up north nearer family. I was happy for him but I can't bounce with enthusiasm. I got in a bottle of wine and we shared it between the 3 of us but I couldn't muster much more than that.

after spending 3 days with my sister and her husband it had started to become a little uncomfortable for me if I am honest. They are not a lovey dovey couple but it is the stupid mundane conversations you have with your partner I was starting to feel jellous of, the cost of petrol when he filled up the tank, how she nagged him to do the cleaning her way not his etc. Stupid stuff but what most conversations are made of.

What was difficult last night was to her my brother-in-law snoring, again odd thing to say, but Mark snored and would often fall asleep on the sofa downstairs. I would wake in the night and find he was not there but was reassured by the snore from downstairs. I had to keep reminding myself whos snore it was last night. So many stupid things, but I miss them all, I miss him.

my cousin did a stupid thing

2010-09-10T10:44:14Z

I feel numb mostly the last few days but i am still feeling angry with my cousin.

Last week she was dumped by her boyfriend of just over a year who she had just moved in with this summer. I appreciate that that must feel shit. However she had the nerve to compare her feelings with what i am going through!!!

To make it worse she then proceeded to OD and put herself in hospital, just because some stupid bloke who clearly didn't really love her ended the relationship!! And she said to me 'I just didn't want to be here anymore', it wasn't a serious attempt and she was discharged from hospital within 24hours. But it made me so angry, to compare being dumped by some stupid bloke to having the man who loved you for 131/2 years and still did, and would never have left you by choice, die. Then to think that that was a sufficient excuse to try to take her life. If either of us has the right to be feeling that way it's me. And yes I have thought about it, how it would best be done to do it properly and quickly, and to be honest it is a good job that one of the first things I did after Mark died was to return all his meds to the pharmacy, at least now it would not be easy in a very black moment. But the main thing is that I watch him cling to every bit of life that he could, every last minuet, to demand chemo even when there was no longer any use. He valued his life so much that I owe it to him not to go there. And it angers me so much that someone could think so little of life that they would just throw it away like that. STUPID

Of course i never said any of this to her, she is obviously fragile, poor her!! I don't think that me telling her she is behaving like some stupid selfish little girl would help. She has a family that love her. And besides she is s heart broken that she is now off having her hair done and going out with her friends!! I dare not go anywhere near a hairdresser incase they talk to me, been anywhere nice this year?!

Sorry for this rant i needed to get it out, there are somethings you just can't say to family and friends without them thinking you are about to jump off the closest bridge. I just want to be with him, but i realise i will have to wait, potentially a very very long time. does not stop me hopeing that my life will be shortened somehow, but not be my doing.

I should have warned how depressing this may be at the beginning of my blog, sorry

no wife cards

2010-09-09T17:27:01Z

Today has been a strange day. I have not cried much though I have got to the edge of it more times than I can count, the lump in the throat and the welling in the eyes but then it stopped, I don't know why.

I went to the supermarket and I thought that I could cope with buying my sister a birthday card, it is her birthday next week. so I went to the card isle and looked for sister cards. But the unexpected feelings came because sister cards are next to wife cards! It occured to me that I will never get one of those, too soon after our wedding for there to have been any event for him to buy me one! friend and fiancee cards, but no cards to my loving wife, and there now never will be. Equally i don't get to send him a husband card. Although last valentines day, knowing the wedding was approaching I sent him a husband card and wrote 'to be' on it.

There are so many things we will never get to do.

I also think its about time i told people that Temple is my married surname, a name i have only been using for 3 months and had no chance to change it on any legal things (eg banks) until after Mark died. My name is Becky.

3 month anniversary

2010-09-05T17:03:52Z

today is our 3 month wedding anniversary and i have been a widow for 7 weeks now.

13 1/2 years, finally we got round to getting married and thinking about family to have our lives shattered so rapidly by cancer. A diagnosis that no one thought of. The Gp will freely admit when ordering the ultra sound that showed the terminal widespread disease, he thought he had a relatively minor liver problem. Mark was so brave i think no one realised just how much pain he was in. including me. I can not forgive myself for not realising how ill he was. And the number of times he asked me what was wrong and i said it was probably gallstones, and that we should wait for the ultrasound that took forever to happen. the big IF question hangs around, if he had gone to the GP last year when he complained of epigastric pain and heartburn would they have found it, or would it have been missed by the endoscope as it was at the beginning of the year and all people being reasured he just have been discharged from follow up? It was a rare and difficult diagnosis, but IF it had been found..... IF it had been found a few months earlier when the pain had started in his liver, it would have been uncureable but it would have given him the chance to fight it, as he was so determined to do but never had the chance. Would he still be here today??? IF is the biggest little word in the world.

Now at the age of 32 it feels like my life has effectively ended, no family for me then, no growing old together (i am so jellous of those little old couples), i feel like i am living for my parents and sister, but my parents will die one day and my sister has her husband. But the world carrys on, oblivious to the passing of my beloved husband, it didn't even stop to draw breath.

and yet i saw him cling on to his life with every ounce of strength he had and herd him tell me how much he wanted me to go on and find someone new and be happy. For him i can not take the easy was out, he would not welcome seeing me so soon. I can not see how there will ever be anyone else, my heart is shattered, time may put a plaster on it but it will be forever broken.

I should be a happy newly wed not a greiving widdow