Life ‘here on the farm’ was getting back to a kind of normality. Of course David was still in recovery, still is in recovery really, but life was calmer and the dark days of the past 15 months were beginning to lessen in their attemps to creep back into my conscious hours. I still had moments of the ‘what ifs’ but had been able to push them out of my head because my beloved husband is cancer free, as much as we can say that and all is good with him. Last week we had begun work on the garden, small bits but at least we had started. We had managed our trip to Hampshire to see family, mainly my brother Tony and my son Jonathan. Both who are very poorly. It had been a harrowing weekend but good to have been able to see them and talk of the good times. As those of you who have read last week’s blog know, David had received a request to do a 2nd Bowel cancer test as the first had shown blood in the sample. This ‘delightful’ piece of information was waiting for us when we arrived home from our weekend; shattered, drained and exhausted. It was a like a huge slap. The biggest of blows and brought us to our knees. It was as if cancer with a little ‘c’ was having a laugh. ‘You thought it was safe, didn’t you, well take this’!
After a sleepless night full of the ‘f’ word that had plagued me for more than a year now, David did the new test and we posted it off. I say ‘plagued me’ because the whole idea of this blog is to tell it from my perspective, not from David’s. He is aware of my doing it and often reads my blog. I began it last August to offload, to share my fears, my sadness and helplessness and anger,so that other partners who feel this way, don’t feel alone. Giving them permission in a way. So these are my thoughts, my feelings and emotions. I was already blogging, as I had suffered a great deal of bullying online, from my eldest daughter Lisa and youngest sister Trisha, all of which has had a huge emotional impact on where I was physically and psychologically when my Journey with cancer with a little ‘c’ began. Blogging on here was the only way I had of telling the truth of the nasty situation they had put me in.
So this past week, trying to come to terms with my brother’s terminal illness and worry about my son and other family stuff, I was left even more drained than before our visit, mostly because of the letter about the bowel cancer test. Suddenly I was back there, in the full throw of the fear and anger I had ,when David first had his diagnosis, or rather, it brought these emotions back in full with fear as the greatest of them all. When my husband had his first routine PSA test, it was slightly elevated so they repeated it. He had no signs, had not been poorly and was fit and active so I had no reasons to think he had anything wrong. After repeat PSA tests that were still high, he had, what I thought would be a routine biopsy last August and I was sure nothing would be found. I was not nervous, so sure all would be okay. How daft that proved to be! He had cancer and this horrible scary journey began. On the 23rd February this year he had Robotic surgery and now his PSA in undetectable. How thrilled we were. How safe and happy we felt. All is okay now. Or so I thought. Life would get back as it was before, here in our beautiful house with its amazing views that I had stopped being able to see.
Teach me to be smug! Teach me to believe life after the past 3 horrible years, would be better now. A new beginning, another chance.
This time, although he had no signs of bowel cancer, no symptoms and wasn’t ill, this time, it was different. He had no signs last time, I told myself foolishly. I read and re read the letter and I was terrified. So this past week has been a very long week. The screening letter had said, they would post the results of the 2nd test straight back to us. After the test had gone,we didn’t speak of this latest scary, we never mentioned it. I actually thought David had forgotten it, as he never said a word. He had been very pragmatic about the Prostate cancer and I thought that was why nothing had been said. It was almost as though the letter had never come, as though the test had never been done. We were both very low, exhausted from the weekend’s harrowing times and very tired.
Our drive is about 100 yards long and so the post is left in a post box at the end of it. Neither of us, any day this past week, offered to collect the post. Silly really as though that would stop it arriving. Thursday and Friday saw us leaving it in the box. But yesterday we had no choice. After returning from our daily dog walk, the box was over full and we had to empty it.
I recognized the letter straight away, the NHS logo on the front was a kind of clue. I said nothing and continued to walk up to the house. Then I told David the letter had come. At first he just shrugged his shoulders. A little later, after a cup of coffee, he asked if he should open it. I didn’t want him to. I wanted to throw it in the bin. After all, I was so wrong last time. The ‘what ifs’ were coming fast and furious and I began to feel light-headed. Seeing this, my wonderful strong man, slit open the letter and passed it to me. It was clear. The sample was clear! It took a few minutes to sink in but it meant that David did not have Bowel cancer and was okay. After looking over at him, I rushed over and we both cried. I told him how scared I had been and he said, ‘not as scared as me, I bet’. My big strong man, my rock who had been so pragmatic and resilient during the past few years and particularly this last year of hospital tests, biopsies, and surgery, had been scared and had kept it to himself. We hugged cried and then laughed. All would be well now. I could now bounce back.
Through everything,the past year and a bit, with this awful disease, it had been the fear of what we thought we knew that had affected us. Not knowing or unknowing at one point, what we knew, was impossible. But this time we knew. He was in the clear and life could now begin.
During my Journey with PC , Fear was the hardest for me. This past week, it had returned, the flashbacks, the nightmares and the hypervigilance, all back. Legacies from childhood I think. We all get scared at times, but having been a victim of CSA, one of the legacies is the huge fear and symptoms of PTSD. These had all returned when I was suffering abuse of a different kind over the past 3 years, over the Internet, by ‘family. Bullying in the way the woman they called my mother had bullied me, by my daughter and sister. So I was already in a vulnerable place when this cancer struck. Although this fear was different, it still rendered me lower than I had ever been before.
Over the last weekend, I was pleased to know that my brother had his family all around him. The family he had created, his sons and daughters, the family, or part of his birth family, myself and my middle sister June and my own family, although a long way away. This is how it should be.Love should begin at home and I am so happy to know he is loved and cared for so well. I wish I could do my bit as I would have done if closer.
Sadly, I don’t have a family, no-one really apart from us ‘here on the farm’. It’s just how it is, not trying for sympathy, that is life. I do have valued good friends but all who live away; so we are now in the process of putting our house in order so to speak, and providing for the animals in our care, for when we are no longer able to keep them. I have left instructions re my personal belongings, jewelry and the like and bequests for my grandsons and grand daughter. It’s a hard task but if Tony can arrange and choose his funeral then I know I can and must do this. These past few years have taught me that life can be over in a flash.
We are hoping to go down to Portsmouth again soon. Maybe see people we didn’t get around to seeing. But in the mean time, bouncing back is the theme of the day. Not to let fear ruin my today. If I am scared, face the fear head on and as nothing can be worse than the past 3 years, the last year being the worst in my adult life, I know I can do this.
As I have written here before, Prostate cancer is an unusual cancer, in that it affects partners and wives in a huge way. Yes the man has the illness but we both have the pain.The side effects are often, but not always life changing. I believe the fear of these, the immense waiting periods between tests, tests and more tests and then results, are unending and cause us all untold damage. But. We can come though this, we need to talk to each other, express our fears, allow our anger and our sadness and never be afraid to cry.
If you have read my blog up until today, you will have read my struggles and in some ways, they will continue but not today. Today is to enjoy. To look forward and to say Thankyou to everyone who has supported me in this journey I never asked to take. Without you all, who knows where I would have been. Thankyou x
To lighten the mood.A few years ago, I decided to have a new hair do.As those who know me from social media, when my children’s book was published I had a shoulder length blonde hair. When I asked my daughter if I should change it, she said ‘yes Mum, you look like a Weeble’. I was mortified. But do you know what. ‘Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down’. So perhaps that’s what I am, even without the hairdo!
Thank you for reading. xx
carolannwright 