My Wonderful Loving and hardworking Husband…. Diagnosed with Cancer 09/16/2016.
This blog won’t be a pity party “feel sorry” blog. But I wanted to jot the experience down and put it out there on the web, because, when I heard the words “…I am sorry but he’s about to have a rough year, we believe he has cancer – you should prepare for the worst” (end quote) . I didn’t know what to do or where to turn, after the initial shock, being the researcher that I am, the first place to look for direction or answers was literally google.
Partially, because I am an avid researcher, and in part because after hearing the word cancer, there is a moment when doctors refuse to give you further information. No information until the blood work, and biopsies have been done, sometimes that takes days, weeks or (as in our case) months, and going months with the word Cancer just lingering around, and no further news can literally drive you insane.
I finally summed up the courage to type into my phone “My Husband Has Cancer”…… and I found nothing that helped, much less anything positive.
First, I want to say, that cancer doesn’t just affect the person diagnosed, but it affects the whole family. Parents, in laws, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and friends, literally anyone who may be close to the person diagnosed. Also, this will be a process, as much as you want to believe it's not true, or that it's going to go away, in most cases it does, but it will take time. Just hang in there! Finally, I wanted to mention that from now on, Life has been cut into three stages.
Your life will now be discussed as follows:
The time before the diagnosis
The time during treatment
And The time After Remission
We have yet to get to the time after remission, but we dream, breath and wish for the time to come sooner rather than later.
To keep this blog positive I wanted to list the a few positive outcomes of being diagnosed with cancer, believe it or not there are a few. Please keep in my mind, this is from my perspective as a wife & caregiver and not as the person who is diagnosed.
Everything other than “LIFE” itself becomes meaningless and irrelevant.
It’s liberating – Stress about money, jobs, peoples view on your life become completely meaningless as well
You develop a strong Compassion, and a Heightened Sensitivity to not only the people around you but to total strangers as well, it’s almost like you now have a better understanding / realization that you have little to no idea what’s going on in people’s lives or how they may be struggling, so in turn are nicer than you were before.
No other task feels un-doable, there’s so little control over cancer, so all the things that seemed difficult before, now seem easy to do in comparison, i.e. ask for promotion, change your style, gain or lose weight, move to another city or state or country. Any of those tasks are essentially easier than being diagnosed with Cancer.
You are better able to see faith and hope in people.
You build a community of people around you some of which will include other Cancer patients , and you realize that they are some of the smartest, strongest people you have ever met, and most of them are really easy to talk too.
The people you are already close to you will prove themselves, and the people who are wasting space in your life will reveal themselves as well
The days you or your loved one has a good day will be like gold. A day with no pain, and no procedure will give you the strength to keep going on the difficult days (so treasure those) and during the really difficult rough days remember that there is a better day coming soon.
Although these are things you could learn over time, Cancer forces you to speed up the process. We are in the midst of it all, but I will make sure to post an updated list when we have learned all that we are to learn from this part of our lives, and I will be posting in retrospect. Until then. Love you All, and Best Wishes!
-- If you were just diagnosed or know of anyone who was, please feel free to contact me via my site I am not a doctor, but I've been in the shoes where I was just wanting someone to shed light my direction during a dark time, if you need someone to talk too, who has been through this and would understand concerns-- if I can be that person for someone else, please do not hesitate to reach out.