Hello, I’m new to here so please bear with me.
I have 2 close friends that have a cancer diagnosis.
One is male and has had a diagnosis for around 2yrs now. He went to Canada for treatment but since then his cancer has also metastasised to another part of his body.
The other is female and hers started on one part of her body and has also metastasised into another part of her body. I only found out about her diagnosis on Sunday. As part of our conversation she told me that she had been told she has 1-3yrs to live.
Now I don’t know if it’s because of the timeframe information that makes it different but since I’ve been told about the females cancer it has really hit me hard. It didn’t seem to impact me till the following day but I have been feeling on the edge of tears all the time since Monday.
I know this is probably a normal reaction but I am really struggling with this. It doesn’t help that I have had problems with depression and anxiety since I was a teen, and I’m now nearly 50. I also work at a hospital in ocular oncology in an admin capacity. The COVID pandemic, short staffing, general work stress and some issues with my youngest son is not helping matters either.
I am also unable to identify what my feelings really are regarding this, I just know I’m feeling quite low at present. I have told a manager at work what is going so then if I suddenly explode in emotion, someone knows what is going on. But I’m really struggling to cope with how I’m feeling.
Sorry for dumping this here but wasn’t sure where else to go. Thank you for listening. J x
Hi
Sorry to hear about your friends, dealing with our own emotions when friends has cancer can be really difficult for everyone, often a diagnosis is described as a tsunami and it is quite common to see people say that the person with the diagnosis seems to be coping really well.
From comments on here it is often people in or associated with hospitals and especially oncology that it can affect more. One person dying naturally affects us more than 100 people living with cancer and now adding covid to our lives has really helped.
My wife never wanted a prognosis and I really struggled with that; I now realise how right she was though and nobody could have guessed how well she would do and certainly many of my worries simply never materialised. It took us a long time to get to "living with cancer" but now we make the most of every day.
I am glad your friends have you and very glad you found us - not dumping at all, just a friend to lean on when times are hard.
<<hugs>>
Steve
