Hi,
My partner was diagnosed yesterday with CLL. He has been diagnosed early so is at stage 0 no lymph lumps but abnormal blood cells. He's ex military and as such has a very positive outlook about where he is with it as thinks could have been much worse. I feel awful as I'm a mess. I cannot stop crying and hate that I'm so emotional as I feel its making his diagnosis about me. How do people cope with feeling like this? I want to support him and feel like my reaction to this is not what I want it to be
Hi Chatcat and a warm welcome to this corner of the Community although I am always sorry to see folks joining us and sorry to hear about your partners diagnosis. I am Mike and I help out around our various Blood Cancer groups.
I don’t have Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) but I was diagnosed way back in 1999 at 43 with a rare, incurable but treatable type of Low Grade Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma eventually reaching Stage 4a in late 2013 so although my Blood Cancer ‘type’ is different I do appreciate the challenges of this journey rather well.
You will see in the link above that CLL, even though it has the word leukaemia in it is often grouped together as a type of slow-growing (low-grade or indolent) Non-Hodgkin lymphoma..... as you see I have lived and been treated with this for over 23 years and I am still around and doing as well as any other 67 year old men.
I assume that as you are saying that he stage 0 he is on Active Monitoring (Watch and Wait)...... I was basically on Active Monitoring for 14 year before I needed any full on treatments........ and your husband is spot on...... in the blood cancer world..... it could have been much worse.
Let's look for some of the group members to pick up on your post. You can also look through the various posts (hit the main group name and scroll down) and as always you can hit reply and ask some questions and see if the member is looking in.
Do check out the Lymphoma Action website. Lymphoma Action is the only UK Lymphoma Specific Charity who have lots of good reliable information, videos and run regular Lymphoma Action Support Platforms for patients with a few groups specifically for Family and Carers...... I highly recommend these groups as there is nothing better than talking with other who have walked the journey.
Always around to help more or just to chat
