I have just had the best news i could expect after nearly a year of what can be best described as a most testing and challenging time. by pure luck i had a cancer picked up that i knew nothing about and after extensive radiotherapy is now undetectable.
I should be celebrating but no i am plagued with sadness for so many reasons. Physically i am fine the treatment itself was not in itself physically challenging but what i grossly under-estimated was the psychological side and all the stuff it would bring up.
For very complex reasons my wife and i never had a family. it was the right decision for us at that time and i would take the same one again in the same circumstances . (in truth i always wanted to have two girls). However fast forward to what has just happened and because of the cancer and witnessing a terrible accident i so regret the outcome of it today. I know i could never have predicted what would happen many years later but the reality has hit home with vengeance.
For the record i am now 61 still happily married to the same great woman, clearly the door is now closed on the main issue, but this past year and this now is testing both of us to the limit and stopping us celebrating what is a second chance. I am so angry and bitter at how having had cancer had changed me and brought back something i really thought i had put the lid on many years ago.
Hi gavref2 and welcome to this corner of the Community.
I am Mike and I help out around the Community. For context, I am now 68 but was first diagnosed way back in 1999 at 42 with a very rare, hard to treat incurable blood cancer (Non Hodgkins Lymphoma) and had to have about 16 years of treatment to eventually arrive at a point that my cancer was under control and asleep with my last treatment being Oct 2015…… so in my book I am living the dream.
First congratulations in getting through your treatment and on the result you have achieved…….. but as you see - living the post treatment life throws up lots of curved balls.
Regrets can indeed start to show their face, past choices and decisions can be magnified and then can fester away…… but the most important thing is you are alive and its sounds like your treatment did it’s job…….
You are now at the point in your journey where you have to make a simple choice - you let your cancer journey and the stuff that it’s throws at you define you……. or you choose to define your way forward..
Moving forward often puts us into the position of having to deal with stuff…… and once dealt with (again) to move on.
I had ‘issues’ after my treatment. I often talk about the concept that when we first get our cancer diagnosis we all get an invisible ruck-sack put on our backs.
We then walk through our journey including our treatments, clinics, blood tests, scans, side effects……. and unknowingly, we continually throw stuff into the ruck-sack…… and the stuff builds up. It’s only when we finished our treatment (rang the bell) and look to try and ‘live’ life we realise that it’s not that straight forward.
This is due to the weight of the ‘stuff’ we have collected in the ruck-sack pulling us down…. stuff like pent-up anxiety and stress, the ‘what if’s’, the difficulty in seeing a way forward with life, the disappointments around how some of our family and friends supported us, the silly things people said during and after treatment….. past regrets……. the list goes on.
There comes a time when we hit ‘the wall’ and this is the point when this ruck-sack needs to be taken off out backs and over time cleaned out. It’s not an instant fix but a process…. but the healing process can only start when we are willing to do it and to achieve this we often need help so these are some links that you may want to follow up and see where you can find this help.
One big thing I did have to deal with was survivors guilt as I lost some very good friends to different cancers over my years and "why did I survive and they did not".......... but I got some great help through our local Maggie's Centre especially their Where Now? Course and One on One support.
Talking to people face to face can be very helpful so do check to see if you have any Local Macmillan Support in your area
As for navigating the post cancer world you may find it helpful to make a cuppa and have a look at this great paper After Treatment Finishes - Then What? by Dr Peter Harvey as it highlights the post treatment milestones.
We are always around to chat.
If there was only a go-to Q&A book we could look though to help navigate this unwanted part of the journey…… but I guess that the length of War and Peace would just be the size of the index.
Always around to chat.
