I've just read through The Bad Fairy's blog and, as I happen to be married to said fairy, I thought I should give another angle from the 'staff' at home (Please don't tell her I was very impressed otherwise I might need to buy her new, slightly larger, hats!). I understand now that a number of users join in and read posts as family and friends of cancer patients to gain an insight into what happens in this complicated world so I hope this blog might prove to be just as relevant but from a partner's point of view . What do you do? Can you do anything? How should you feel? What on Earth is my partner feeling like? How would I feel if it were me? Are you allowed to feel happy? These are just some of the questions I've had over the last few months, some of which I've now answered.
DAY1: Hearing the news.
Everyone will deal with this in a different way. I wasn't expecting the news so my reaction apart from incredulity, anger, fear, sense of injustice and of course concern for my wife was predominantly "what can I do", "how long has she got" and the over-riding need to do something immediately.
Being a typical bloke I knew nothing about medical things (I do now) and I had no idea what cancer was other than it was very very bad. It always amazes me that almost every women I know seems to have a vast encyclopedic knowledge of all things medical. For those of you in the same boat as me and too scared to read up on it, it was explained to me as cells that have gone into overdrive, multiplying out of control, which is what causes the lump in breast cancer. These mad cells infect their neighbouring cells and can also spread via the blood stream to other parts of the body. I think some people might assume everyone knows this, I didn't. It also helps make sense of the treatment.
I was told that the cancer we were dealing with was a secondary cancer which basically meant that in this case the cancer had spread to the liver and lungs and was incurable.
We were told the news on a friday so my need to do something about it immediately was not going to be met as oncologists (cancer specialists) don't do weekends. The first weekend was very tearful and as the news started to sink in the uneducated fears started to escalate. What are we going to say to the children? What do I say to my wife? What does this all mean?
There was nothing happy about the first day partly because I knew nothing and had no tangible hope to hang on to, I know better now.
It was the lack of knowledge and the inability to actually do anything immediately that were the main contributors to making a really bad day worse. I was frightened to learn too much because I knew some people would be very negative and I only wanted good news and hope.
Having children to consider was the biggest motivation to being brave and practical and I'm not sure how I would have reacted without them. They gave us the excuse to act happy which actually lifted the knife out of my heart for the occassional beat.
During this first weekend we decided to deal with this as a team so forgive me when I say "we" when you might think I should say "she". This team attitude has stood us in good stead as we can now discuss plans, fears, information, practicalities of day to day life and survive or even enjoy what seemed to be an unsurvivable situation.
For anyone reading this and new to secondary cancer, we're now 4 months down the line, we laugh and joke, we feel positive about the future, the children are happy and I've honed my skills with the hoover, washing machine and cooker that perhaps I should have trained harder in, earlier in my life. The NHS have been fantastic and I have a massive feeling of gratitude towards the staff at the hospitals and doctors who are simply awesome in the proper sense of the word.
Life got better after the first weekend. I've had good news and been given hope.
The truth is hard sometimes but what is strange is how well we can deal with it.
