Advanced cancer and a young family

Welcome to the online community and to the Family and Friends group and I'm very sorry to see you joining us at this time and I am sure we can all appreciate everything you are going through at the moment. The waiting to find out if the treatment has been successful can feel as if time is dragging and in the meantime your mind is in overdrive which is not helped with the expected arrival of the new baby in March.

Obviously you will have been given lots of advice about relaxation and not stressing out the baby but I think you should, if you have not already done so, speak to your nurses and your GP to see if they can help you, they may suggest things like yoga or meditation to help you, in some of our other groups the members have been discussing the merits of meditation and many of them have found that it helps a lot.

You might it beneficial to find out if you have a Maggies Centre near you where you can discuss your feelings with them and possibly in group sessions with others in the same situation as yourself. You may also want to think about joining our Carers only forum group and introduce yourself to others in the group, the members are all very friendly and are really very supportive towards each other and give a tremendous amount of care and support and I would invite you to join the group.

I understand your need to make sure that your boys remember their dad, if you have a look at this Macmillans leaflet on making a Memory box it might give you some ideas for you, your husband and your 3 year old son to work on together and as time goes on it can include the new baby.

You may also would like to have a look at Winston's Wish website to see if the can offer you some support.

We also have some publications on Talking to children that you can order, they are full of useful advice. If you decide to order you will need to set up an account which you do by using your same login details as you do here, (same email and password) 

You need look no further that this group, the Carers only forum group and Maggies to find support. You can come along to our 2 groups at anytime anytime you feel the need to chat, let off steam or do the thing we all excel at and let off steam knowing that you will be amongst friends who never judge but will wrap you up in all the support you need when you need it, we are always here. When it comes to asking questions feel free to ask us anything, you will probably find that one or more of the members will have experienced the same thing and will share with you, really there are no questions just solutions and if you remember there are no daft or silly questions everyone you have is important to you and needs to be answered and your new friends here will only be too pleased to help you.

If there is something you don't know or would like to ask about your husbands treatment we have an Ask a Nurse group page where you can ask our team of specialist nurses anything that is troubling you and they will give you an answer usually within 2 days and if you would like to speak to one of the team they are available 7 days a week from 8 am to 8 pm on 0808 808 0000.

One of the things that maybe troubling you at the moment is the future and how will you cope with the financial side of running a home and our friendly telephone support team can give you lots of advice and make arrangements for you to speak to one of our financial experts, the friendly team can also be contacted on 0808 808 0000 every day and are also available if you need to talk over anything on a one to one basis in confidence (if you do phone them please mention that you are a member of the online community).

You can also ask questions on our Ask a Financial  Guide group page.

If you need to chat I'm always available here on this group or over in the carers group and will do all I can to help and support you and point you in the direction of any other help you may need.

You are not alone in fighting this battle, your new family of friends are standing shoulder to shoulder with you to help you face any challenge that life has thrown at you.

My name is Ian and they call me  and I hope that you find the above of interest and help, please remember that I am here to support you on this journey you have found yourself on.

Ian

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Hi,

Thank you for your reply,

I have looked at the talking to children leaflet but not some of the other things you mentioned so I'll look into those.