cancer – Page 14 – carolannwright

Taking My Own ‘Advice’

Well perhaps I should start by apologizing for last weeks blog. It was down beat, self indulgent, angry and full of sadness. Maybe apologizing isn’t good enough, I don’t now. So I won’t say sorry but will say that I am today, understanding how my clients feel whilst in therapy. This is the first time since I began Counselling, that I fully understand how each person who has been brave enough to come into therapy, can feel. Using CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) I work with my clients to enable them to make changes. If they are not functioning properly, changing may enable their lives to improve. If they are depressed, working with their thinking, being more positive and this can be hard for those feeling down or anxious.Looking at their thoughts, the way they think, because it is this that controls the emotions and that results in their behavior. You can’t go straight in and change the emotion or behavior without first looking at to how your thoughts are at the time. Some will say, ‘I can’t change, I have always been like this’ or ‘this always happens’. And that is often the issue.’ If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always got’, is something I was told during training. If you don’t like what is happening, only you can change it. This can be harder for clients than I think I had acknowledged in full.

Most times with collaboration, we can achieve the goal the client has been seeking and so they improve. Given strategies for survival and maintenance, they are often less likely to have the same problems in the future.

We go through, ‘nothing can change this’ ‘I can’t do this’, To ‘I feel more capable of doing it now’ Things get better. Their lives improve.

But sometimes you can’t make it better, you can’t make the nasty go away so you have to work on acceptance. Like in loss. The bereft can’t have the person they grieve back and so by working on their feelings, we can gently change the thought process and allow them to grieve properly. Grief will take as along as it takes but sometimes needs a little push, to enable the person left behind to accept the situation and ‘move on’. Always at their pace.

Here endeth the first lesson!

Well, none of this has been working for me. Physician heal thyself, as I have said before isn’t working. I know it will, but I am impatient and need it now. I don’t like the Carol Ann I have become. I don’t like feeling as I did as a child. Alone in my thoughts and pain and helpless .

So why am I feeling this way? The alone is because David is strong, pragmatic. He says whatever happens we can’t influence it. We can’t change the fact that he has Prostate cancer. We can’t un know what we know. And he his of course, right. So, I need to find away to stop thinking about it all of the time. Stop researching, reading everything sent to me and some I find myself.

The helpless is back to childhood. No love from my ‘mother’, a dysfunctional family and sexual abuse that I suffered all of my life until I was 22. No one helped me because no -one knew and I was helpless to stop the horrors. One of the reasons I support spreading facts about the devastating long term impact CSA can have on victims and work to help some of them become survivors, like me.

Today.

Things are moving forward,we now know David’s ‘case’ has been discussed with the ‘team’ and we are now waiting for the appointment to go and see the Oncologist/Surgeon to discuss options. Does that feel better that something is happening? You would think so but it only makes it more real. But it is real and that’s the problem.

So today I have been reading a journal that I kept while I was working and am reminded of clients who struggled as I am struggling. Sometimes, after weeks of work I would think nothing was actually helping them. Nothing was changing.But then one day, a client would come to session and say they suddenly had ‘ a light on’ moment. Something would suddenly look different, life would look different and become clearer. It didn’t mean their pain had stopped. It wouldn’t mean they were suddenly ‘cured’ of the bad thoughts or behavior or had stopped having the nightmares etc. But something had happened and they could see their way forward. A different approach to a situation, a way out of the grief and pain. And then there it would be; a smile. Every therapist’s ‘worth it’ time.

I am waiting for that light. I know I can’t counsel myself but I can listen to others who have been where I am. Other wives and partners of beloved husband s who are fighting this fight. I can gain strength from those who write about recovery and the future. I can stop feeling sorry for myself and find my inner strength that has been alluding me of late. Don’t know how but I will.

The future is where my thoughts need to be so I am house hunting. I know we can’t consider this yet but there is no harm in my looking. It may be back in Hampshire where I have family and friends. It may be in Pembrokeshire or Somerset where again I know people. We have no idea but looking forward is something I have always encouraged in clients and so that is what we will do.

When it is all over, I aim to try and raise awareness in younger men of this awful disease, promote testing and helping with fund raising. Not yet but after.

I think and hope that Carol Ann is coming back, so cancer, you had better watch your step!

Thank you for reading x

The Falling of Tears and the rolling of Emotions

In my work, I teach clients how to let go, how to be ‘in the moment’, how to allow themselves to cry. Tears are healing I will say. Just let them come and you will feel better, I will say. Well, do you know what. I lied. You don’t feel better, I don’t feel better and I have cried buckets of tears these past weeks. Do I feel better? Does letting go make you feel better? No it doesn’t and I apologise to everyone I have told that they do.

I thought that once we had made the choice, as to what treatment David will undergo, we, or rather I as I can only speak for myself, would feel better. I don’t. We don’t as yet know whether the surgeon will operate as my hubsnad is over 70. This in itself causes us obvious worry. It is all in the hands of the ‘team’ who will meet and decide whether to see us for an assessment. Horrible that others may know before we do, how our future will pan out. Helplessness is evident now.

I am currently not sleeping well. I wasn’t sleeping at all but have a kind of ‘bracelet’ that induces sleep and it works. So I get a few hours each night, enough to help me through the fog that is my today. As I awake, everything is okay. Normal. I look around my beautiful purply/Lavender bedroom and am okay. Then it comes, like a sledge-hammer hitting me in the very pit of my stomach. I remember. All is not okay.

I try to retreat back under the duvet but my wonderful husband is already coming up the stairs with my breakfast. Yes, David, with all that he is going through, believes in the ‘norm’. The norm in our house and has been for 30 years, is his bringing breakfast up to our room and we sit in bed and chat. With our curtains drawn back, we look out over beautiful countryside, hills and valleys and had always wondered at this amazing scenery.

But not any more. I don’t see the beauty anymore.

Anytime it can strike, anytime during my day when I have worked on ‘normal’ ,suddenly the rush of emotions from deep inside of me cause a huge rolling sea of apprehension and fear. A legacy from my childhood returns in all it’s glory. Panic. The feeling of something huge and horrible coming. I try to find the stop cock for these empty emotions, to try and turn it and twist it firmly shut. I have always been able to do this in the past, switch it off and carry on as though nothing happened, nothing is wrong. But not now. I can’t seem to reach it fast enough and suddenly salty unstoppable emotions stream down my face .

As I said before, in an earlier blog, life these past years has been fraught. Lots of losses, some forced upon us by death, my eldest sister and a close friend. My youngest daughter’s unborn baby. Some others because I have always needed to be honest. This need to keep my integrity cost me my eldest daughter Lisa. Yes I could have lied on a legal statement and said everything written about us was true but I couldn’t. I had tried to prevent a little foster girl being treated as I had been treated, by the woman they called ‘my mother’. I had tried talking to my daughter about how she was with this child. and she shut me out of her life but still expected me to lie for her. I couldn’t do this, it was far too much to ask as the lies were too huge. So life became full circle you could say. Trying to stop this cost me my daughter and my grandchildren. At that time I was helping her adopt a foster baby, my granddaughter Hannah, who was 4 years old this past week and that in itself brought the tears. This falling out,was followed by horrendous treatment from my youngest sister who had, sadly, barged into our lives after 40 years of no contact and taken over the family that was mine telling wicked lies to keep them onside. They should all be part of this. Supporting us in our hour of need. That’s what families do isn’t it. Not my family.

So I was already in a bad way when this new nasty hit us all. Yes I know that it is David who has this disease but I have been shocked and angry at how it has affected me. I should be the strong one as I always have been. I should be comforting and encouraging him, not the other way around. I had read that wives and partners are affected as well as the patient but was never prepared as to what extent. This disease changes people. It has changed us, changed me, changed the dynamics, the conversation, the way we are. It has stolen our ‘norm’ and replaced it with ‘canceritis’.

Looking out of my study window as I write, I can see the Welsh hills and valleys. It all looks the same but the beauty has gone. The leaves are beginning to fall, a time of year I usually love. Things obscured by the leaf laden trees have become visible again. Today I can see the top of a little cottage that is obscured all Summer, stolen from my sight. It looks the same and as it always has in Autumn. Like nothings changed.

But everything has changed. Yes, the seasons always do, but here ‘on the farm’, life is now different than ever before.

So how do I survive to help my husband? How do I get the ‘normal’ back? I don’t know. But what I do know is that the Carol Ann who is the Health Professional. The Carol Ann who everyone comes to in a crisis. The Carol Ann who is the survivor, needs to buck her ideas up and come back from wherever it is she thinks she is hiding. Because I need her, here, now!

Last week I said I would find humour. Still looking.

I said I would be strong. Still trying.

I said I wanted ‘it’ to stop, to turn the clock back. To un-know what we now know. Didn’t happen. So I need to look forward. Plan Christmas. Plan where we will move to after David is well. Yes we have decided to move, maybe back home, who knows but move we will. Life here has been spoilt. Spoilt by ‘family’, spoilt by illness, spoilt by loss,so a new venture is on the cards. If I can plan ahead, then all will be well. As a child, an emotion I had, never served me well. I ‘hoped’ that my life would change. That the abuse would stop. I ‘hoped’ that one day my ‘mother’ would show me love. None of that happened. So I believe I am now due some good. That ‘hope’ will prove justified.It’s time it began to do that. So Hope. If you are listening, I am now hoping life will get better. Please don’t let me down.

Thankyou for reading. x

Feeling the extremes of pain.

Well, I am hoping that the above does happen. Hasn’t as yet, but still hoping.

The early part of this week, we, David and I , talked of nothing else apart from what is happening, re the invader of our peace, the unwanted guest in our thoughts. The cancer that has hit our little family like a thunderbolt. We have read , I would think, everything ever written about this nasty disease, the treatments, the outcomes, the side effects. None of it very enticing or reassuring. Whatever David decides to do, he seems to be dicing with his future, our future. None of it can be done without some kind of repercussion and that makes decisions very hard.

All week we have tried to contact our specialist nurse to no avail. We then decided to talk to our GP and I must admit he was very good and very helpful. Eventually a lovely lady, one of the nurse specialists rang and went over the options. Although David was almost sure he had decided on surgery, Robotic, she asked him to take a few days to think, to make sure it was what he wanted. She is ringing tomorrow morning for his decision.

We also have had support from our local group, on Facebook and another lovely lady whose husband has been through it all. She has offered to talk to me or my husband on the phone when and if we feel the need. Very kind.

For those who know me, they will know that I don’t cry. Sad movies, music, weddings etc. I feel the emotions but don’t and sometimes, can’t cry. A legacy from keeping my emotions under control as a child. But now, I seem to be in floods at every upsetting thing I hear or see and every time I try to discuss what is happening to my wonderful man.

We are a very private family and very small. Yes we both have extended family, not local to us but we do. My own ‘family’ however, has been infiltrated by its own kind of cancer. Someone who has always wanted my life apparently: my ‘mother’ often said my sister was jealous of me, why I don’t know but several family members have said the same. With lies and deceit, she now feels she is living it, pretending my daughter is her daughter and my grandchildren, her grandchildren. Sad really but dangerous.. Friends and family on here know who this is and I am just thankful that the nasties that have been inflicted on me over the past 3 years, mostly instigated by her since she appeared in their lives, have stopped . They have done irreparable damage to me and David and had left me very low and poorly at a time in my life when I need all the strength and support I can summon. I hope she is very proud of herself.

Back to the purpose of my blog, journey. I have experienced heights of pain and emotion I didn’t know I had, these past weeks. I have been scared, no terrified, angry, sad, full of hatred and yes helplessness. I have been to the depths of despair that the thought of losing someone you love so much, takes you. One minute I want to scream that it’s not fair. The next I can’t summon the breath to do anything but survive. I read that things will be okay and feel better. Then on the same page I read that nothing will ever be the same again. That thought breaks my heart.

Life has been put on hold it seems’ here on the farm’. I can’t seem to look forward, can’t plan and can’t see my way through the fog of literature and research that anyone in our position must go through.

Help! I want to scream, but who to? Hold me! I want to ask but can’t ask. Make it stop! That’s the biggest. Make it stop, turn the clock back. Let’s un-hear what we heard. Let’s unknow what we know. Let’s go back to normal. To ordinary. Even to boring. Anywhere but here!

On the visit to my GP he asked me to go in the following day, on my own. He said he could see I was struggling and asked if I had family to support me. He knew I had 2 daughters as I had talked often of the baby my eldest daughter was trying to adopt a few years ago and how I was helping her. He knew how excited I was by that and how I loved my daughter. He didn’t know what had happened in the interim.He suggested I contact her and tell her what is going on. I felt ashamed to tell him why I couldn’t do that. I told him why and exactly what happened and he was in disbelief. But it made no difference, she has shut us out and being told what is happening will not affect her in any way. Sad but true.

So my world has fallen apart. I am on my knees and waiting for this help that my poster talks about. Tomorrow we will at least be on some kind of waiting list. Not sure how long but it will seem a lifetime. I know I will wane between wanting it over and not wanting it to happen. Love is keeping us afloat, love for each other. Whatever happens, nothing in that will change. He will always be the love of my life, my rock. I will always show my man that he is just that, my wonderful, sexy, loving, kind, intelligent funny man and eventually we will find the one thing that has kept me sane during trying difficult times. My sense of humour. But not today. No humour here.

Thankyou for reading x

A Very Hard Week…. and more to come.

Well this past week was one of the hardest of my entire life. To say I felt broken is the biggest understatement ever. The feeling of falling apart, of all the pieces of ‘me’, just blown away in the fear and terror was there all the time. I have never been good doing ‘helpless’. If a family member or friend was in trouble, or came to me with a problem, I was always there, trying to make it better, put it right. When I did my counsellor training, we did schema work and I discovered that I was a ‘rescuer’. Couldn’t bear to see others afraid, in pain, in trouble without wading in, sometimes wrongly, sometimes unwanted,but trying my best to make it right. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a do-gooder, I am not everyone’s answer to a prayer, my need to help ,comes from way back in childhood when no one was there for me when I so needed them. I have worked hard to be the person ‘I’ needed, at various times inmy life.So helpless is not something I do well if at all. And this past week I felt it in a huge way.

I had been convinced that the cancer I have talked about in the past 3 blogs, my husband having Prostate cancer, convinced that it had spread. These past 3 years, I have lost so much, we as a family have lost so much that another blow was, in my mind, expected. I would go over in my mind, how I would greet this devastating news. Would I be able to take it? Would I be strong enough to comfort my husband? Would I, as I have felt close to for the last few years, fall apart? I have been hanging on in here for a long time, pretending all was well when really, inside of me I was already broken, heartbroken, sad beyond measure and then this. So my fears around surviving the news on Friday,and being able to be strong for David was something I was beginning to doubt.

He has been with me, as I have said in earlier blogs, sat and held me when my world fell apart on numerous occasions. Held me in the night when the night terrors returned, sat with me in the day when I felt lost and lonely within myself. He never faltered, never complained and always always showed his love. When something nasty happened via ‘family’, he was the one who pointed out that none of it was down to me, reminded me of the ‘wicked’ that is within my birthright and made me feel a bit better. I have been psychologically bullied and bruised on social media and in ‘real life’ by those out to cause me pain, for more than 3 years, leaving me broken and very low. My only resolute, my only constant was my husband David. Now it is my turn, was my turn and I wasn’t sure I was able to be the strong person, he had fallen in love with, all those years ago.

All week I fluctuated between feeling nauseous, panic-stricken, terrified and yes, helpless. To okay, calm and ‘we can do this’, whatever ‘this’ was. On the first visit to see the consultant, after the biopsies, I watched the body language of the nurse and doctor. I hadn’t been aware of doing this at the time,but it has become a natural instinctive thing I do in my work, so it just kind of happens. That first visit, the nurse came and sat between my husband and I, on the bed behind us and then the consultant, leaned forward. That was when I knew. This is going to be bad news. It was. That was the first time we were told that it was real. My wonderful husband had cancer.

As I said last week, cancer is a dirty word. It can come into our lives in many ways. Sometimes in life something cancerous is evident. Not the disease, just something that is there, that contaminates everything it touches, like a bad apple in a fruit bowl. A criminal mind in authority. A trouble maker out to cause upset and pain, spreading their lies and hatred to other people. Sometimes a single person can do that, poison everyone within their circle and then spread their nasty into another person’s life, using lies and stories they know to be untrue, contaminating things others hold dear.I have met that kind of cancer, within my own family. Then there is the disease, the one everyone dreads. The cancer that I refuse to give a capital letter, the one my lovely man has . That is the cruelest.

So back to the results, we made our way to the hospital last Friday, last day of September,every single traffic light was red. The road works stopped us, then parking, well that is another issue all together. David was quiet but seemed calm, I was the duck on our pond, calm on the outside, paddling like mad to stay afloat under the water. Feeling sick, apprehensive and terrified, I held tightly onto my husband’s hand when they called us into the room. I tried to see any kind of clue on the consultant’s face but couldn’t. He asked us how we were. You have to be joking I thought. How do you think we are?? But I said nothing,still convinced that as the past 3 years showed, this was going to be bad.

‘Well’ said this man sat in the chair, looking at David and then at me, ‘Just tell us!’ I silently screamed, tell us and let us go home, back to the safety of our wonderful somewhat changed home. But I said nothing. ‘The good news is, it hasn’t spread outside of the capsule’. I remember thinking I had heard wrong. No relief at that point just shock of a good kind. ‘It hasn’t spread so our options are better’, he continued. I looked at David and saw nothing while I wanted to hug this medical man sat in front of us,and thank him. But did nothing. After explaining the options, he suddenly said that although he had just laid out the surgical approaches, because my husband is 71, they may not offer surgery. Talk about good news bad news all in one minute. I couldn’t quite take this in. I could feel David becoming angry, I was becoming angry but we both held it back. The consultant wasn’t sure about the age limit,so we were to go home and think through our options, then let him know and an appointment to see the surgeon would happen and he would make the decision. We left.

The journey home was okay, I felt elated that it hadn’t spread and felt calmer than before. The age thing to me, didn’t seem an issue, we just wouldn’t accept that because of his age, they wouldn’t operate. That can’t be right. Can it! I slept better after a cosy evening with my husband and my dogs, beginning to look and feel a better future.

Saturday morning it hit me. David has cancer. He needs to have surgery or treatment to cure him. Why did I feel better? How could I feel better? He has cancer. The dreaded c word. No if’s or but’s just facts. So yesterday was a confusing day emotionally. I wrote to a few people on Facebook, on a private site for survivors. They are supportive and the best people to talk to as they have been on this journey. All are so kind and so willing to share and to help.

I never considered being here, being in this position, I don’t suppose people do. Having to be the strong one in our partnership but here I am. Not willingly but determined not to let my husband down. I am already a survivor, not of an illness but of Childhood abuse and do a lot of work to help victims become survivors. I have to draw on this now with every ounce of strength, to be strong and be David’s rock as he has always been mine.

As wives and partners of men with Prostate Cancer, we are a necessary aid to survival and to recovery. We are the ones who need to be there for our man, to comfort him, to hold him and to love him. Reassure him that he is still the same person he was before the dreaded c word and to help him pull through. On a good day, I think I can do it, No, I know I can do it. Let’s hope, in the weeks and months ahead, the good days are more present that the bad.If other partners feel this way, I send my warmest love and thoughts, it ‘aint easy’ as they say.

Thank you for reading. Please comment if you feel you want to . x

One step forward..many steps back.

Today’s blog is the second step of this new and scary journey we are having to make. I have used this photo as it shows me, as a little girl, but doesn’t show the fear, hurt and unhappiness I felt back then. I was helpless to the abuse I was suffering, to the hurt inflicted, mostly verbal, by the woman they called my mother. It shows a little girl smiling. Unwittingly I had hidden my life from those around me and I find myself doing that once again. I felt alone as a child and feel alone now. Of course physically I wasn’t, alone I mean. I had 3 sisters, a brother and parents. I had a relative who ‘loved me’ so no, I wasn’t alone. Today I have a loving, funny, intelligent partner in my husband. a wonderful caring daughter in Marie, my brother Tony and nephews Paul and Robert. I also have many close friends and relatives, some I found late in life. But, in the quiet moments, in the ‘wee small hours of the morning’, as the song says, I feel alone. Once again helpless.

If you haven’t read previous blogs, I am writing this as a way of offloading my fears and worries during this next phase of my life, it is a journey no one wants to travel. The Cancer journey. David was diagnosed a few weeks ago I am struggling at times to deal with what might or what might not be. This week, the days have been full of panic, fear and impatience. It makes me cross that someone somewhere, who has read the MRI report, knows what we are up against but we don’t. I know that’s ‘just how it is’ but that makes no difference. One part of me needs to know NOW! The other part wants to run and never know. We have a long 5 days ahead of us until we are told how bad things are or not.

One of the strengths of our marriage is humour. David makes me laugh every single day. No matter what is happening in our lives, at some point he will bring my smile. Either by his silly boyish antics or quick-witted comments. I try to do the same. My sense of humour, albeit sometimes a bit ‘out there’ has seen me through some very dark days. As a young mum of 2 daughters, bringing them up on my own most of the time, friends around me always commented on how I could always turn a near disaster into a funny story. I would relay it to them, using humour and so it lessened the pain for me and brought a smile from them. As a child, making people laugh helped me cope with the lack of real love and smiles at home. To please others, family mostly, I would make them laugh or smile in one way or another. That, I felt, was good.

In the past few years, there has been little to smile about but I have found myself ending phone-calls with a light-hearted comment, ending conversations outside of home in a way to leave the other person or people smiling. I tried hard to remain positive even though my ‘family’ was disintegrating around me. David would hold me at these times, when the real emotion came, when I was safe and at home with him. He would comfort me and always manage to bring a smile to my face.

This past week it has been so hard to do this. September is always hard for me. Happy memories of my first child Lisa Jayne being born, happy memories of my first grandson Harrison and holding that tiny bundle in my arms. Then sad ones because they are no longer part of my life. My fault I suppose, I lost my daughter and her children by my honesty and trying to protect a child in her care. Our wedding anniversary is also in September and this year seemed more poignant than usual. There is nothing like the ‘C’ word to make you re -evaluate things and people. To put things in perspective. Yes I have lost many people I love but my time now must be given to David and to this fight we have ahead. The rest doesn’t matter. ‘They’, don’t matter. I,now, need all of my strength, to support him, and that will include humour, if it must. Years ago, Marty Caine a comedienne of the day, said, ‘always laugh at yourself, then it won’t hurt when others laugh at you’. I have never forgotten that and need it today.

When talking this week, my husband said, he didn’t understand why I was afraid, it wasn’t happening to me. How wrong is that! How wrong is he! I married him in sickness and in health and will be here no matter what. The things that hurt him, hurt me. The worry that is his, will be mine. We are a couple, a shared life, almost a shared being. Whatever he goes through, I will wish I could take his place. Just as I do with my children. But I can’t. All I can do is be here, be strong and yes, make him smile.

Monday I was okay. I came on here and did a great deal of research, that left me very low. Very scared.

Tuesday I was a mess, results from too many words, too many outcomes, procedures, relapses, etc. Too many stories.

Wednesday I decided not to research and have a day without ‘it’, felt slightly better, more optimistic.

Thursday we went out. Looking to the future, our future, Making decisions is a no go currently but we may need to move at some point, down size and so we explored a few areas to see where we liked. We decided that we might even return ‘home’.

Friday was quite optimistic. We don’t yet know the score, so yes, a bit better.

Saturday was okay. Marie spent the morning with me so that helped.

Today, I spent the morning baking, David’s favourites as I always do on a Sunday but feel very apprehensive.

I have read stories, on support groups on social media etc.some really good some, really sad and bad. I keep telling myself, ‘one day at a time’, as I would tell my clients. I have tried relaxation techniques and breathing relaxation strategies, all of which I taught clients over the years. But physician heal thyself is not working.

I have to remain positive. I hope next week’s blog will be just that. We will at least know the score. We will know if the ‘C’ has spread. We will be told our options and I pray with every ounce of my being that it hasn’t spread and that it can be removed. Those of you who believe, please prayer for us.

Thankyou for reading x