cancer / Coping with cancer.

“Wobbles”

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My son   described it as a “wobbly” …a sudden emotional reaction to a situation you thought you had accepted

Yesterday afternoon,  finding myself in the haematology for the fifth
time in two weeks , I  started to get a bit unreasonably angry and frustrated. .  Already I am fed up of hospital appointments.   Spending my time off and holidays in the place where I work.   It’s like a busmans holiday!……and the anger was not “why is this happening to me? “,  after all shit happens,        no not that way of thinking, ….. but I really resent  the fact that my life is on hold and I can’t plan anything and every time we come to the hospital, it upsets me.  It is as if it is in your face.  When we are away we can pretend that life is normal.

 Hospitals remind me and I don’t want to be reminded.  Also it seems that every time we come things get more complicated.  The “simple polyp” Michael had removed yesterday is more sinister than they first thought and they couldn’t identify it.  So we await the histology of that.

…..and I know they have to explain every side effect for legal reasons and for informed consent, but after hearing it all for the third time,  we were both suffering from information overload.

To my amusement,  after an hour and a half session of explanation,  the nurse asked Michael, ” so do you understand what will happen tomorrow? “  and he replied “ yes, you will give me drugs which hopefully will make me better “!  simple!  That really is all he wanted to know!

I guess you go through these stages, before you come to a resigned acceptance of the situation, bit like grief really.    The stunned disbelief at first, anger , fear  bargaining,  depression and acceptance.

We have not only had to go through this for the bowel cancer, but also again for the lymphoma blood cancer.  So it is no wonder that I am having a little “wobble”.

We discussed how we felt.  I think it is important to get it out in the open.   Michael is impatient and  just wants to get on with it, so it can be over.   He strives to think positive,  yesterdays polyp news shook him a bit for a few hours.  Now   he is already talking about Christmas in Paris!  You have to admire him.

So I got on my bike and went for a hard ride to get rid of the anger.

Underlying all this is how do I deal with work?   At the moment I am taking holidays, but they are not finite and I need to go back next week.  I found it difficult to concentrate when I was at work two weeks ago,  I feel guilty leaving my colleagues in a situation where they are already short staffed and under pressure.  But that very pressure makes it even more difficult to do my job properly.

This morning I woke up with fear.  Today is the first round of chemo.  How will he react? How will I cope?  They have warned us about mood swings, sickness, fatigue.  Or he may have none of these.  Time will tell.

One day at a time

To be continued.

Love denise

16 thoughts on ““Wobbles””

  1. Denise, my thoughts and prayers are with you both. Please try to stay strong and have faith that everything will turn out ok. Hugs from Florida!

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  2. I wish I was there to give you both a hug! Biking is a good way to deal with the stress. I hope his side effects are minimal and he has an easy time of it. XO

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  3. Dear Denise, You really are a dear person. The wobblies are good. They help you get rid of those horrible feelings so they don’t stay bottled up inside of you, rotting away.
    I’ve learned to acknowledge my wobblies, in my head they take on an almost physical appearance. I give them shape, texture and sometimes even color. I play with them a bit and then I wrap them up and tissue paper and send them aling their way.
    Luckily for me, this all happens in my head. Silently. Otherwise, they’d’ve lock me up ages ago!!! Bises, S

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  4. Hello Denise..my goodness you certainly have been given alot to deal with..and it’s not fair. All you can do is get through each day as best you can but I completely understand how you must feel about work…it’s just another one of the burdens..but in a way it’s a blessing to have that time to be “normal” and just deal with the work…that is if you can turn your brain off from the “other” ..

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    • Hi Debbie. It is so touching to have support from people we have not (yet) met.

      I am going to see how it goes next week. If I am being honest, I really have lost the concentration I need for my job, which is highly specialised and I can’t afford to make mistakes. As you say it may be a good distraction but I need to find out. Everybody keeps urging me to go off sick but I need to be able to justify that to myself.

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  5. Hi Denise. I hope Michael has come through his first chemo session OK. My sister really tried to eat healthily when she had chemo. She had fruit and veg juiced in a juicer, and ate turmeric and garlic. I hope you don’t mind; I’m just mentioning this in the hope it might be of some help. All the best. GM x

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  6. I like your son’s word to use for when one is feeling gloom and doom about a situation! I’m going to use it from now on as saying “Wobbly” even sounds better than other words one can come up with! I’m praying that the polyp results are going to be okay – you don’t need more to deal with! And who knows – going back to work may help distract you from feeling down – and hopefully you will be able to keep your mind on work and not worrying yourself about Michael – not that I mean you’ll forget about it but distractions do help sometimes! And one of my methods for coping with situations is to start praying the rosary – amazing how much it calms me down and reminds me to rely on my faith to get me through! I do like Sylvia’s method – I’m going to use it too!

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    • Hi Sandy…I must say that before today ( Saturday) there was no way I felt I could concentrate at work my mind was too distracted, but it is amazing how 24 hours later my mind has calmed down. It is almost as if the thoughts in the back of my mind, get louder and louder, builds up to a crescendo, (when I have a wobbly!LOL!) explodes….. and then calms down again.

      Anyway, thanks for your continuing support.

      Love Denise

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  7. I am sorry to hear about the finding of the polyp. All we can do is to hope that Michael’s body will react well to the chemotherapy – he seems to have his own impressive way of tackling all this and even talk about Christmas in Paris, Sending my best wishes.
    ps. I can totally relate to the absurdity of hospital bureaucracy and also how angry and helpless it makes you feel.

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