sorrow is the bird we must feed so it can fly away...
C's mum was told she was 'clear' in September (she was required to have very regular checks every few months but scans, surgery etc at that stage found no cancer).
We had 2 really good months.
The first month you feel strange because it doesn't feel real and you're kind of waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under you, and they're also still missing their hair from the treatment so they still look like they're in the full swing of their treatment when they're not. Plus she was still in pain from the surgery and her last round of chemo. But gradually her hair started to grow back and she started to feel better and...we tentatively started to think ok, she's free of this
Then the second month you kind of adjust to the fact that she's actually 'clear'. It starts to sink in for her and for the rest of the family. We all took some time away with her and her partner up the coast and it was really good - a really happy family time. Lots of laughing. Lots of joking about treatments (which hadn't really happened before). And lots of planning about the future.
Yesterday, at work, we found out that her cancer is back and she's starting chemo all over again.
It just sends you into a tail spin. I'm still trying to get my head around it - we're as devastated this time as the first time we heard the news. I guess it's because you think you'll get at least 6 or 12 months of grace before you get any more bad news, but it just doesn't work like that.
And I know we were starting to hope she'd beaten it for good. That it was gone. You have that hope. You start to believe that it might be true. Could be true. Is true. And that is so dangerous because when it turns out not to be the case it really, really hurts.
I hate this lack of control we all have with this thing - it gives me the shits! I told C it's not playing by the rules, that it isn't supposed to come back for at least another 12 months, and especially not right at Christmas! Which I know sounds so stupid and irrelevant because it's not like there's ever a 'good' time to be told you have cancer. But we'd all planned to go to New Zealand as a family and spend some time celebrating her beating the big C - and she was really looking forward to it. It was going to be this really happy, celebratory time. Now we're all canceling flight plans and desperately trying to rearrange things to make sure we'll be there over Christmas with her while she's going through chemo. It's so fucking awful and shitty and unfair that this is happening to her again so quickly.
I know that as soon as i get my head around this i can be mature and measured in how i express myself about this situation but at the moment all i can say is: my heart is so sad right
We had 2 really good months.
The first month you feel strange because it doesn't feel real and you're kind of waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under you, and they're also still missing their hair from the treatment so they still look like they're in the full swing of their treatment when they're not. Plus she was still in pain from the surgery and her last round of chemo. But gradually her hair started to grow back and she started to feel better and...we tentatively started to think ok, she's free of this
Then the second month you kind of adjust to the fact that she's actually 'clear'. It starts to sink in for her and for the rest of the family. We all took some time away with her and her partner up the coast and it was really good - a really happy family time. Lots of laughing. Lots of joking about treatments (which hadn't really happened before). And lots of planning about the future.
Yesterday, at work, we found out that her cancer is back and she's starting chemo all over again.
It just sends you into a tail spin. I'm still trying to get my head around it - we're as devastated this time as the first time we heard the news. I guess it's because you think you'll get at least 6 or 12 months of grace before you get any more bad news, but it just doesn't work like that.
And I know we were starting to hope she'd beaten it for good. That it was gone. You have that hope. You start to believe that it might be true. Could be true. Is true. And that is so dangerous because when it turns out not to be the case it really, really hurts.
I hate this lack of control we all have with this thing - it gives me the shits! I told C it's not playing by the rules, that it isn't supposed to come back for at least another 12 months, and especially not right at Christmas! Which I know sounds so stupid and irrelevant because it's not like there's ever a 'good' time to be told you have cancer. But we'd all planned to go to New Zealand as a family and spend some time celebrating her beating the big C - and she was really looking forward to it. It was going to be this really happy, celebratory time. Now we're all canceling flight plans and desperately trying to rearrange things to make sure we'll be there over Christmas with her while she's going through chemo. It's so fucking awful and shitty and unfair that this is happening to her again so quickly.
I know that as soon as i get my head around this i can be mature and measured in how i express myself about this situation but at the moment all i can say is: my heart is so sad right