Surgery booked end of month - isolating over Christmas

Hi , Welcome to the club you never wanted to visit. The waiting for definite information is awful and really is the worst part of the treatment. It is useless for me to suggest that you don't worry because it is the most natural thing to do, but try to distract yourself as much as you can . Perhaps you can make some cakes or cookies for your son's birthday and maybe decorate them together. Having to be in isolation before your operation won't be a bonus - are you able to have zoom meetings with friends or family. Take a look at some of the other threads on here - I found the AWAKE thread particularly good day or night and it made me laugh out loud at times (yes really) when I was at your stage. Please only seek information from good sources and do not look at Dr. Google - he is often wrong and out of date. If it turns out to be cancer it is very treatable these days-I  know that from personal experience. The important  word is "If",at this stage, you don't know and neither does your team.Try to continue to travel hopefully.Sending you big virtual hugs in the meantime .Kwissy

Hi & welcome (??!)

Good you found us here as just being here will make the whole process a lot better (it did for me and I'm very resilient). Yep there will always be people in a worse predicament but what you're going through is much worse than people who are just carrying on living their 'normal' lives so cut yourself some slack, you ARE allowed to wallow you know...just don't do it for too long as its not healthy!

Have a look around the site, look at some people's profile (mine's been shortlisted for the Booker prize) and you'll see loads of success stories, yep some have bad side effects and the like but I promise you they are in the minority.  I can only tell you what worked for me which was a combination of a very optimistic attitude, having (lots of) fun (think I wore out quite a few medical staff along the way), eating healthily and exercising regularly.

I hope your son has a cracking birthday and can tell you'll move heaven & earth to make sure that's the case...and you'll have a good Christmas as well as many more down the line (where you can over-compensate for this year's).

Sam