caregiver living a sober life

deananeavin

Hi. I am new here. My husband and I are both sober. He has stage 4 metastatic cancer, and has been getting chemo for the last year. It was worse than either of us had imagined, but we got through clean and sober. My twin daughters were seniors in high school, and I was managing being there for their fun stuff: senior banquets, parades, prom. Gregg was sick and wanted to be there understandably, but being with him at my side at these events while trying to celebrate was surreal. I held it together baby! Now he is in complete remission, praise God, and it is all hitting me. I am still finding support from fellow 12 step members but they literally do not understand. This is different for me. I am in grief over all this disease has taken from us, and trying to learn to live a life with a spouse in remission. Hope someone can relate. xo

Eskuna

Praise God! Wow I was there I kno how it feels. Congratulations🎉🎉🎉🎉

deananeavin

https://csn.cancer.org/discussion/comment/1713311#Comment_1713311

Thank you

Lalizz

https://csn.cancer.org/discussion/327685/caregiver-living-a-sober-life

I can relate in a few ways...my husband was just diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. I worked in the addiction & recovery field for almost 30 years, and have been retired awhile. Hoping that you and your husband are both celebrating your devotion to sobriety, your shining role modeling for your twins of how to navigate adversity sober and maybe now (?) how to grieve those losses.

We're at a later stage of our lives and with the cancer, so our challenges are both similar and different. As a caregiver of some sort for most of my life, I'm finding ways to care well for myself and support my husband. Yup! That's the priority for me: care well for myself 1st so that I can show up for him.

Am discovering new ways to do both...can't take the risk of burning myself out and leaving him on his own.

I'm always curious to hear how we caregivers are caring for ourselves...