My wife has metastatic bowel cancer with two or three liver tumours. She has not made her condition generally known as she wants to be ‘normal’ and not have everyone asking how she is.
The trouble is this has pretty much meant we have no social life - if arrangements are made they might have to be cancelled which would mean disclosing her illness by way of explanation.
Add to this her extreme fatigue and loss of appetite and the result is that we go nowhere and see no-one. Spending 99% of our time with just eachother as company, when we are both stressed, depressed and frightened, is a somewhat toxic environment.
This can only get worse as the ‘day of judgement’, when the oncologist will tell us what effect her chemo- and immunotherapy treatment has had, if any, and what the future holds, in terms of treatment (medical and/or surgical) and life-expectancy, looms.
What should I be doing? I try my hardest but my efforts just make my wife’s stress worse, according to her….
Hi Jodagriff
So sorry to read your story, it is really not uncommon for the person with cancer to want to be treated 'normally' but this can lead to the loss of support to both them and everyone around them. The other side of it is all the people who care about you could be wondering what they have done wrong in that you no longer come out to play.
There are lots of benefits of talking we can see here
I did a living with less stress course that really helped me. I was much better at imaging and planning a future without my wife than I was appreciating what we had - pre-grief is very real and very draining. Life still likes to throw curve balls of course and the conscious breathing exercises are often helpful.
My wife was very clear she never wanted to know how-long - and in truth nobody can really say what happens in an individual case. Still nobody could have predicted how well my wife would have done - we have been here over 10 years!
<<hugs>>
Steve
