When illnesses collide

jbeans888 said:

Hi
I don't have an answer to your questions, but I wanted to say hi and welcome to the board. This is a great place to rant, ask questions and get info. There a few people here with your type of cancer. I am sorry you are tormented with your situation. Just remember to stay strong. Believe in yourself, I know u can.

jbeans888 said:

Hi
I don't have an answer to your questions, but I wanted to say hi and welcome to the board. This is a great place to rant, ask questions and get info. There a few people here with your type of cancer. I am sorry you are tormented with your situation. Just remember to stay strong. Believe in yourself, I know u can.

AussieMaddie said:

You too??
Hi Tina,

I feel your despair. I'm so sorry. I don't have answers to help you and I wish that I did. Do you think you might come eventually to be able to look at your extra weight - and the discomfort and changes that it brings - with the sort of acceptance which you bring to your cancer? Have you ever done any kind of meditation in which you can let go of worry about your body? Often, the more we worry about eating, the more we are likely to overeat. I know that there are some very effective forms of meditation that can help one to do let go of such worry, though I cannot use them myself. The nature of my psych problem makes meditation a much harder thing, but I have achieved it in brief moments.

On re-reading your earlier post here, I don't know why I didn't pick it up sooner, but I see that your experience of depression, like my own lifelong mental illness, caused you to look at death without fear, because the depression is more painful. I was actually scared of acknowledging that in these forums because I thought that it might seem insensitive to most people who do face the prospect of death with terror. Nevertheless, I had to acknowledge that it is true. I have such deep tiredness from struggling with mental illness, never having overcome it even with the best of help, that I actually welcome the prospect of it ending. I'm not suicidal at all. I am very strongly spiritual in my belief that our life has a purpose, and that we die only when it is our right time to die - regardless of what disease we might have. Between tiredness and belief, I met my diagnosis with absolute calm (and some pleasure).

Coming to these forums, I feared that my response to my own cancer might make me less empathetic with those who hold so much fear, but that doesn't seem to have happened. Pain is pain in however it is felt, whether mental or physical. It's true that my greatest pain has been mental, but then I've led a blessed life in many ways, almost completely free of physical pain. Time will tell whether that will last since other treatments must follow the chemo.

I do think it very likely that obesity related problems could take me before the cancer does. Or a combination of both. Like you, I accept what I can't change and I count myself blessed to feel so accepting. How much harder would this part of our journey be if, like most, we were to travel it in fear. My heart goes to all our fellow travellers for whom cancer has been the cause of overwhelming pain as well as the most terrifying fear. It's impossible not to empathize with that.

((hugs))

AussieMaddy

AussieMaddie said:

From my heart..
Hope that it's all right to answer all the responses in this one (when I start to answer each separately, I find that my avatar looks like it's going on forever down the page)
Oh,oh! On reviewin this post, I see that it does anyway. Oops..

Things not picked up earlier:

Carole, I meant to say to you earlier that I have tried EFT, and I thought it was helping but couldn't maintain the cost of the visits. I've tried doing the tapping myself without success. But thanks for the idea.

Poopergirl, I will mention to my oncologist about meeting the weight loss specialist, but I'm not at all confident that he will approve of such a surgery.

.........

Now, to answer to more recent replies:

Hi Carlene It's nice to finally meet. You've obviously been around the forums a great deal. We just haven't had reason to cross paths for some reason.

I did try for about six years to make myself eligible for gastric banding. At first through a public hospital, then privately, but (as you might know) it's necessary to have a psych evaluation before they will operate and I was turned down on that basis. As well, I was told by two weight loss surgeons as well as one's consulting psychiatrist, that the level of my bingeing was so great that I was likely to cause myself injury with the band too - vomiting etc
As for the problems that would almost certainly arise from having bypass surgery, I agree that the option is not ideal either. I already know that my omentum is thickened. When they finally do do the surgery for the cancer, I imagine that will be the first thing to be 'debaulked', so yes, I have thought of that too. It is just that ongoing weight increase scares me almost more than anything else. As for not seeing a better therapist, I'm quite sure I couldn't. My psychiatrist is a world expert in her field. I admire her very much. The fact that all my hard work over so many years has not freed me of the problem isn't her fault. (I had seen many other therapists and psychiatrists before I got to see her. She was the first one who made sense of all my experience. I had experienced an incident of abuse as a child which, together with other circumstances surrounding it, left an indelible imprint on my life - and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put me back together again. It's no-one's fault that that childhood incident has so overwhelmed me. I'm strongly of the belief that if you do your best - in anything - to make something work, and it never does, then it was never meant to be fixed. It is in the working so hard, for so long, to fix it, that has provided some of my most valuable life lessons. For me, lessons is what life is really about, not just winning over adversity.
I take your point about combining the kinds of effects of bypass surgery with the surgery that is likely to be done on my cancer. I already know that my omentum is thickened and will likely need to be "debaulked". Maybe the cancer surgery will have the same effect on my ability to eat anyway? I may yet lose the weight. If I do, watch for the woman flying across the sky in a bright red, yellow and blue helicopter, with flags waving as they declare "I made it!"
By the way, because I can't easily see my psychiatrist since I've had the cancer (harder to catch trams and buses to travel the two hour journey), I have sought counsellors for support, so in that way, I haven't given up

Dear Carole, yes I also believe that life has a purpose. I also don't think that we are necessarily meant to know what that purpose is. It's in the experience we learn. Yes, they've ruled out lapband, and to be honest I don't think I stand a chance in hell of being accepted for the bypass either. Just want to hold onto anything really. But as I said earlier, the surgery that is due to be done for my cancer might prove to offer much the same thing anyway. We'll take it a day at a time.

Tina, when I first found these boards, it was your experience of peritoneal cancer that I found most similar to my own. I neve knew that we would prove to have so much more in common- even a shared sense of spiritual purpose. Certainly not the only ones here to feel that, but together with other life experiences, there is something that bonds me to you. Your presence makes my journey *so* much easier Tina. Thank you.
The one very noticeable difference in our experience is that you have children. I am at once heartbroken that I never had children but at the same time *so* glad that I never did. I would never want to put children through the trials I have experienced, or indeed, to leave them at all.

Thank you to you all.

My love and best wishes, and many hugs (((( hug ))))

AussieMaddie