Spouse blames her breast cancer on her wine drinking - trying to diffuse this and give her a path out of it

Hi MichaelW 

I am not a carer but I am someone with metastatic breast cancer. I am one of the breast cancer community champions, and I noticed you hadn’t had a response, so I hope you don’t mind me responding. 

I would agree with you that being stuck on this guilt isn’t helpful for your wife. However I doubt you can change her mind through reason. It’s a bit like reason is never able to counter some of the populist myths that do the rounds. It’s always appealing to have something or someone to blame. I think I would leave the task of helping her to get some perspective on this to her therapist. Try not to bring the subject up. Listen to her, but don’t try to counter it when she brings it up. Hopefully she will find a way of moving on from it once she has completed treatment. 

Thanks for the reply. It's been a better week in regards to the guilt/blame situation. Now that we are done with the AC and she had a good ultrasound scan, I am hoping we can keep moving away from this.

My husband is dying of colon cancer and some of those I've disclosed this to have asked what he did to get it, did he eat and drink badly, did he smoke etc. whilst I think that question is insanely rude and inappropriate and no he did not, he was in peak health aged 43 when diagnosed with high muscle mass. 

The question is asked because people are horrified by the idea that unluckiness exists and they need to blame something. I see it every day on the news that young colon cancer patients must have done something to give themselves cancer and it makes me so angry and sad because anecdotally lots of GPs can tell you what kinds of ppl they see walking through their doors with stage 4 under 50 and it's definitely not the ones you think. Many many healthy marathon runners and sadly teenagers who never even had the chance to ruin their health via lifestyle.

All this is to say, she is likely seeking confirmation that something has happened for a reason. And I can understand why. Although we know alcohol use can increase risk of cancer we all know someone who is basically an alcoholic in old age and never got cancer. At least I do. So unfortunately it's either genetic or bad luck because it's very hard on an individual level with breast cancer or many other cancers to say yes you got this because you did xyz. Cancer is a brute because it is inherently uncertain. I hope she manages to perhaps see this as a situation of luck and she doesn't blame herself, it's not what a sick person needs, she needs love and care not self blame