Hi all.
I had been diagnosed with renal cancer back in Oct 24.
Had surgery in Nov '24 and spent 3 days in hospital, then was discharged, I got the all clear in January this year and went back to work in February,
Now I'm really struggling with my mental health, I've recently had flu and laryngitis along with migraines and sickness bugs.
I do have depression, but feel like I'm spiralling and that whenever I get sick, I'm fearing the cancer has come back and I won't be so lucky this time.
I can't focus in work so have taken a couple of days off, I just feel afraid and fear the worse.
Is this normal to feel like this? I still don't feel like everything had happened to me, it was discovered unexpectedly at an ultrasound scan. And everything moved very quickly to the ct scans,pre op and then surgery. I feel I still not hit me yet.
Could this be me now realising what actually had happened and I'm now in the depths of a depressive mode again?
Any advice/ help will be very much appreciated.
Hi Doodlebug,
Yes, from what I've read from trusted sources, and reading other posts on the forum, I think this is pretty normal.
Firstly though, the fact you've had several illnesses over recent weeks will have affected your immune system and this will have contributed to your low feelings. And then feeling anxious and depressed in turn pulls you down physically. The other thing is that I think we pretty much all have this fear, once we've had a cancer diagnosis, that one day it will come back. Even if we are told we are cured, there is always this niggle in the back of the mind that in 5 years, or ten years, or any other time in the future, we will have a relapse or will get another cancer. They say that one in two of us will get cancer at some stage in our life so I try to focus on that and think, well I'm only the same as 50% of the population! (That's a very broad way of looking at it, but it kind of helps me to think like that!)
I have a strange way of dealing with my diagnoses (I have had two cancers in two years). It's not a conscious thing, but I realised that I was looking at myself as two completely different people: the person I was for 62 years of my life, completely healthy and pretty fit, and the other person who is the one who went to the hospital appointments, had the surgeries, etc. I went through a kind of grieving process two years ago, for the loss of all my years of good health. Came through that, but with this strange notion that there is one person who lived BC (before cancer) and another person who lives AD (after diagnosis) and they are both me! (Not easy to explain this - sorry if I'm rambling!) The advantage to me of this way of viewing the situation, seems to be that once the hospital bit is over and done with, I can put it all out of my mind and get on with being the person I was before two years ago.
Yes, it's a bit of a surreal feeling to have been through it and come out the other side and I think that's what I'm feeling, and the above is how I deal with that. It's like a blip in my life. Almost as if it never happened, even. I also both times have healed pretty well - hardly any pain, active from day one, no requirement for further treatment each time, and no fatigue which is apparently a very common after-effect of most major surgeries. What you said about feeling it hasn't hit you yet - you may be spot on with that! But if you have had the all clear and no more treatment necessary, technically there isn't really any need for it to ever hit you what has happened. It's in the past now, and the future is hopeful again.
Maybe easier said than done, I know. I have had depressive bouts in the past, many years ago, but not for a very long time, but I can still remember how hard it was to turn things around and get myself out of it. I used to do things to distract myself that were rather OCD - such as, playing a Pet Shop Boys DVD literally over and over and over again, day after day, because I liked the tracks!! I focused almost obsessively on certain things, to take my mind off what I was depressed about. It did work for me. I went out and revisited activities that I hadn't done for years: swimming, horse riding, ice skating, and whatever worked for me (it turned out to be the swimming) I continued doing, challenging myself.
Try and look for a focus - something you enjoy, in other words! A hobby revisited, or perhaps something like reading avidly. If you cannot focus on one thing, try something else instead.
We've all come through a very life-changing experience and yes, it's very normal to have all kinds of worries and feelings and fears over it, one way or another. It also knocks us very suddenly into an intense realisation of our own mortality, which perhaps we didn't have before the cancer diagnosis. And acceptance of this is a life stage that perhaps we are not yet ready to embrace - I know I wasn't!
Take time to rest and heal yourself from your recent illnesses you've had since your surgery, and to do things you enjoy. You might need a little bit longer than a couple of days off work, to effectively start this. But hold onto whatever you can focus on that is positive and enjoyable, and don't over-think the future because it's the present that matters the most, and your present is cancer-free.
Sending you lots of hugs 
