Again I am not sure if this is a normal feeling, but I certainly felt/still feel like a burden to different people.
Wife – I feel like a burden to my wife as she has had to do so much for me throughout all of this, ferry me about to all my appointments if she has been attending or not, at points I had to go to extra blood tests at short notice which she had to drive me to. She has had to cook for me, do the cleaning on her own, washing dishes, washing clothes, just so much because for one reason or another (due to things being too cold for me to touch on chemotherapy, or now after this operation my recovery) I could not help her. She may not like me sharing this on here (this could disappear before anyone else gets to read it) but I know she thinks she has not been a great support to me as she struggles with her mental health (and the stress of this really hasn’t helped), I keep on telling her and I will write it down here again, she has been a massive help and I really cannot ever describe how I would have got through these times without her. We have not flown through and we have certainly muddled our way through this process, but I doubt anyone can fly through this, but my wife has certainly been a huge rock to me throughout all of this and has become my carer.
I will always feel sorry for how much I have put my wife through (and still am putting her through, as I am writing this part on October 13th 2021, it’s not like things have suddenly got better on this front).
Family – to my immediate family again I feel a burden for the stress caused to them. The first day I called them about my diagnosis I could hear the pain in my Dad’s voice, as he also had bowel cancer in his 30’s, from that tone of voice I can imagine he blamed himself. I know afterwards my sister went on a stress clean of her house to give herself something to focus on to calm down. Sticking with my sister, I felt an added burden as throughout this process I have been bugging doctors to refer my sister to get checked out, just to make sure she was fine and not end up in the situation I have been in. She finally was given a date for a colonoscopy at the beginning of October, however this meant that her and her husband had to cancel a week away for her to have the colonoscopy and isolate before hand, I felt bad that they couldn’t get away for a break. The good news however from this is nothing was found, so that felt like a relief to me.
Friends – again I would say to friends I felt a burden for the stress caused to them again and then for all the rules and regulations placed on them to visit me during this, such as just being garden visits, not allowing them inside even to use the toilet. You may say we are being over cautious, but we just wanted to keep me safe and well to get through treatment and to the operation as quickly as possible.
Work Colleagues – maybe an odd one, but last year during furlough times of covid, I volunteered to not go on furlough and be the main constant in the team, so as the rest of the team was circulated between being on furlough and then being back at work, I was there to update people and what was going on and help with workloads etc. I then felt like a burden to my colleagues as this year as things have picked up, I have not been around to help, they have been left short staffed and due to covid there hasn’t been the budget to increase the size of the team, so I feel sorry for leaving them short.
