Dear fellow carers,
My wife has been diagnosed with stomach cancer about 3 months ago. The shock was immense: the first thing I had to do is order and pick up pain killers (opiates), as she was in a lot of pain.
From that point on the stress-marathon began and has never stopped: I had to take full responsability for every aspect of the situation, a.o. medication, communication with care professionals, financial management, trying to calm her down while the specialist had told her she had only 1,5 year to liive since the cancer had metastazised….
My life as an individual was over ftom that moment on. My general practitioner stopped paying attention to me completely.
I was supposed to burn myself out in order to support her, however: where will she be after my burn-out? FYI I love her very much. I am simply worried about how to survive this situation in order to help her in the best way possible.
Since I am Dutch and live in the Netherlands I joined a Dutch online community however they kicked me out for addressing these matters. Of course these topics are universal so I joined this site to continue to share and discuss these experiences.
My question to you is: to what extent do you recognize my experience ? I wrlcome your response.
Thanks in advance and God bless
Sorry to hear about what you have been going through it does sound very difficult.
Much of the information on here is focused on the UK so while I would normally point out that carers in the UK are entitled to a needs assessment and of course the introduction of the Carers Act these would not apply to the Netherlands.
For myself I did a course on living with less stress, a key element was appreciating what we have rather than spending a lot of effort looking towards a future I could neither control or could be certain what would happen. The conscious breathing exercises are also good for dealing when life throws us another curve ball but also for helping me to relax.
<<hugs>>
Steve
Thanks Steve for your support,
I am in the proces of acknowleding what you are talking about: not being able to control the future.
Before her diagnosis at least the future seemed managable/foreseeable but of course even then it was not quite true.
I am aware of the ancient mantras about that there is only the present moment: this is of course true but hard to accept sometimes: I’m working on it though.
God bless & best wishes for you and your inner circle
