It suddenly appeared to me that when your diagnosed with cancer alsorts of feelings come spinning in your head. The main ones that seem to crop up and ones I too have experienced is “I am I going to die “ I think this is a very common feeling and it probably causes a lot of anxiety among us as cancer patients, and also our families who are worried for your future too. The next one was “why me” for reasons I can’t understand but I experienced is what have I done wrong in life to make me have cancer. Well again you try hard to rationalise it most cancers can be environmentally caused or just pure genetics to name two. It’s one of the many reasons I support genetics testing, I am awaiting my results for this and I am not expecting to know till most likely December but maybe next month. I keep thinking what results do I expect or even understand. If my womb cancer is caused by lynch syndrome then that predisposes me to other cancers, whether I get them or not I will at least have regular screening for them. But if my genetics test doesn’t show any faulty genes then it feels like an unknown and probably more of a concern because then I think I be like “what did I do wrong?” It’s silly really but the feeling is there. The emotional effects are probably the hardest to deal with because I feel genuinely grateful for having a wonderful medical team looking after me, trust in your team is so very important.
With addional medical problems it’s easy to put yourself in an uncontrollable spirail that goes round and round. Every time something goes wrong medically I worry is it the cancer coming back have they missed something. My GP is wonderful I really put her though the ringer but I really have a huge respect for her, because I was left very much distrustful of doctors because I believe my cancer could of been spotted sooner if I was listened too. My GP always thought something was very wrong and tried to get things sorted quickly for me with the hospital. I have seen her nearly every time I go for an appointment because I trust her. She may not realise it but I can’t thank her enough. I am probably a terrible patient because I tend to push myself beyond my limits far too often and end up suffering later. It was when I had a bad infection that scared me the most. When I was taken to hospital via my GP I kept saying “What have I done to myself now”. She just looked at me and held my hand and said “don’t think like that you will just get yourself down“. So after totally terrifying myself on more then one occasion this year I finally admitted that I have to listen to my Doctor and to stop resisting. I wasn’t doing myself any good at all, infact it was getting me down. There is no easy fix to emotional feelings that can be confusing but if we take the time to listen to our bodies they usually are screaming at us. The other most annoying issue is fatigue, I realise that this is now a part of me and I try hard to listen to my body and rest when I need too.
