The last six months have been horrifically life changing. My daughter (late 20s) had an out-of-the-blue, "seemingly neurological event" and this started a massive sequence of events. Unknown diagnosis, lots of guesswork, two weeks in hospital, brain tumour identified, operation in Addenbrooke's (while conscious), news that tumour could not be removed and that it was a very rare glioblastoma, stage 4, which would come back and the life expectancy is 12-18 months. She has two very young and beautiful boys.
She has undergone a 30 day treatment of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, we are 2/3 of the way through a gap in the treatment, and she will embark on a new regime of chemotherapy next month - one week on and three weeks off - for up to six treatments. None of this treatment is about curing, it is all about prolonging life. It also seems to be dependent on scan results - the scan date is a couple of weeks away.
She has been amazing. I am a lucky man and our father-daughter relationship is beautiful. We have spent much time together and made the most of what we have right now - our philosophy has been that "the future will look after itself". But now, the future is getting nearer. I am seeing her anxiety, hearing her fear, and am struggling to hold things together to support her, my grandsons and those around us. I have good people in my life and feel plenty of love coming my way, but sometimes this feels almost unbearable.
I wanted to introduce myself here because I feel that as things progress I will need love and support from those who know what this is like, rather than those who are loving, well meaning, empathetic but do not understand these feelings. In all honesty, I do not understamnd them myslef half the time.
So, hello. I hope to get to know some of you better soon. I don't know how this works - perhaps I will get an email if somebody reads or responds to my post. I am hoping to feel less alone in due course.
Hi TB67
Welcome to our community, I hope you find it helpful because we all recognize that feeling of loneliness and it can be amazing how typing at each other on here can somehow help us recognize we all moved to a new normal somewhere west of the real world.
If we look at your feelings when someone has cancer I know I recognize lots of the things I went through and of course still go through - it can be helpful though to be able to think e.g. it hurts - everyone would hurt given this and can help sometimes to make things less overwhelming.
Friends can often be well meaning but it is so easy to not match their help with how we feel at the time. I know before my wife's diagnosis I was probably hopeless at coping with people talking about cancer. When I talked at work about our cancer journey together I found a lot of new friends who had never felt able to connect before - not the greatest subject for polite conversation generally.
Thank you for sharing your story, it can help us all feel somewhat together and we can make a great team.
<<hugs>>
Steve
