My husband was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer at the end of January. It was picked up on a lung scan offered through our doctors and came as a complete shock. He has been dealing with it really well so far. Very positive, eating really healthy food, exercising regularly. The first scan after two rounds of immunotherapy showed the tumour in his lung had reduced by almost a half, which was incredible news.
However, the last couple of weeks, something has changed in him. He is less positive, talks about feeling 'lost' and not sure of his purpose anymore. He is getting irritated and cranky with me. I'm not sure what to do to help him. He is talking to me about it, but I have to pick my moments, but he won't talk to anyone else about it. He certainly won't talk to a therapist.
How can I help him? I really don't know what to do. It's making me feel very anxious and for the first time, I've started looking into the future rather than taking each day as it comes, which makes me really frightened.
Hi Winnow
Welcome to our community, I hope you find it both informative and supportive.
Sorry to hear about your husband, it is not that unusual for someone with cancer to keep things quiet as they can be worried about people seeing nothing else beyond the cancer and of course they are still a real person.
Being the partner though can be really hard, I am glad you found our community where we all help support each other. Something I found quite helpful was looking at Your feelings when someone has cancer as being able to recognize these emotions and accept them as normal and valid helped me understand how I felt. I did a living with less stress course that helped me realise that I was spending a lot of time on "what if's" that I could not control and I could imagine worse than actually happened rather than enjoying what we have day to day. Then the conscious breathing exerciess were good for helping me relax but also when something unexpected came out of the blue.
Do post on here whenever as someone is always listening.
<<hugs>>
Steve
