Hi everyone,
This is my first time sharing on here. I’m 26 and I was diagnosed with colon cancer three months ago. Since the day they found the tumor it was a week and a half waiting to see what the prognosis was and if it had spread, finding a lump in my breast and another week waiting on the results of that biopsy (thankfully nothing), surgery and recovery, finding out it was stage 3 and I needed chemo, and learning that the likelihood of recurrence even after chemo for my particular profile was over 1/3.
I’m now in the middle of my second round of chemo and while overall things are not too debilitating, I feel like mentally I’m reaching a breaking point. So much has happened so fast and I was already in quite a challenging moment in my life having recently immigrated to the UK and ended a 6 year relationship.
I’m thinking back on times in my life when I felt I was at my limit, burnt out, stressed and I reached the point of being like “okay I can’t take this anymore, so however hard it is or whatever the consequences are, I have to leave this situation”. But this is a situation I can’t leave. It doesn’t matter how much of a mess I feel or whether or not I can cope or how much I feel I’m loosing touch with myself. The cancer doesn’t care and there is no escape.
I guess this is the reality of all health problems and many other challenges in life that are fully out of our control, but it’s just such a scary thought to me. I was privilidged enough to have never had to think about my health in a serious way and being so young I felt invincible. Subconsciously in my mind this was the kind of thing that happened to other people and not to me. I feel nostalgic for that sense of safety and security I wasn’t even aware of until the rug was pulled from underneath me.
I have allot to be grateful for and allot of support but the lack of agency and the sense of being trapped in the situation is really starting to take its toll. Has anyone else felt this way specifically about having no control and how have people come to terms with it?
thank you for listening :)
