Four weeks ago my girl friend and I were talking to one another about the fact that maybe, after lots of really bad stuff happening to us in our lives so far, we were getting an opportunity for some happiness together with someone who really understood what we had both been through.
Three weeks ago she went to A&E with some pains. Yesterday we saw her oncologist for the first time...
I won't go through all the ins and outs of how we got here as I don't want it to get back to her that I'm on here... She is very introverted and I am very extrovert. My instinct is to shout about it from the highest steeples.... hers is to hide from everyone.
The particular cancer she has is not a battle we will (currently!) ultimately win. Both of us have fought major medical battles in the past, in very different ways... and this just feels so bloody unfair.
Yes, there is treatment... but it's major! I mean off the bloody scale major... and the long term survival rates? Well... put it this way I've cried a lot this morning.
Chemo starts tomorrow, that's how fast this is moving... and we have 6 really hard months ahead of us... and then it's a case of when it comes back... not if.
There was a specific moment in my previous experience when I ran out of courage... When that happens you know that courage is a finite resource (Don't anybody please come back and argue that point with me!). Yes, your tank can refill over time, but you have a tank with no gauge on it, and you don't know how much is in there until it runs out... just like the fuel in your car, it runs totally normally right up to the empty, and suddenly you can't do it anymore. I'm scared I'll run out of courage again... It's terrifying when it happens.
I'm so afraid right now...
I lost my wife to a different condition when I was younger.... and now I'm here again.
WTF... 
Welcome to our community, I hope you find it both informative and supportive.
Sorry to read about your girlfriend and also your wife, that does sound like a really dificult challenge and glad you found us on here where we can help support each other even if we just scream from time to time, we even have a special group The Room where slamming the door is normal.
I found a lot of support in our local Maggies and then came to Macmillan. My experience of cancer is via my wife who has Leiomyosarcoma. Her cancer is incurable but after some adventures the oncologist was somewhat surprsed when it became stable and been that way for over 10 years now.
Lots of people get concerned that everything in their life will be taken away by cancer. I ened up doing a living with less stress course that really helped me to appreciate what we have rather that what if's about a future I could not control but could actually imagine worse than actually happened.
One of our challenges was with our son, he has seen far more of hospitals then we ever would have liked and things certainly do impact on him but because we have always been open he manages to cope.
<<hugs>>
Steve
