How do I deal?

First
First things first: there is topic area in this Discussion joint that is devoted to gyn...um...female stuff. Post this in there as well, if you have not already done so. You will find kindred souls, ladies who have had the same problems and, it must be surmised if they are in there posting, surviving.

Which brings up the second thing: Hope. There is always hope. Do not give up on hope. It is a marvelous thing, a strength-builder, and often helps you defy the odds. And odds are for gamblers, after all. We are not gamblers but survivors, even if we, on occasion, have to gamble. We are survivors, and we thrive on hope and humor (in my opinion).

Third: you are not alone. I am here, we are all here. You will find that while it is a crummy club, the members are awesome people. You are not alone.

Fourth: How do we survive? How do we cope? I know that each of us has a different story, a different method, but it boils down, in my opinion, to a firm commitment to surviving. Interestingly, the people in here, most of them, have faith in something. I am not a religious person, by the way, and am not preaching. I am saying that regardless of faith or belief or whatever, each of us seems to have some inner strength, some faith in our own selves. There is hope, there is humor, there is faith, there is will.

If you are, in fact, dying, my advice would be to spend the last of your time, however long it is, enjoying your life. Why would we know that our time is ending soon and spend it, waste it, in agony and misery and worry?

Knowing that we are dying (eventually) is perhaps the one 'gift' of cancer: our mortality slaps us upside the head, and we can learn from that to live our moments as they should be lived, preciously.

My thoughts are with you.

I wish you and your loved ones the very best.

You are not alone.

Take care,

Joe

kay-b said:

Thank You
It feels good to talk with people that can relate to me. I honestly don't want to spend my time crying and feeling sad all the time, but it's hard. I know everyone here has probably felt this way at one point. That's what i'm having trouble with. I don't know how to get through this. When I lost my grandma I knew it would all be 10 times harder for me. She was my rock, she took such good care of me, and now she's gone. My only friend supporting me has been away for about a month now, so I haven't even been able to cry to him.

Happiness just feels so out of reach right now. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. It does help a little, just to get out all my feelings. Take care.

You are welcome


I would not purposely imply that one can simply flip a switch and instantly go from grief to doing the Happy Dance. I do not believe that. I understand where are you coming from, I do, and I join probably everyone I know of on this site who believes you are entitled to feeling depression and despair. You have, after all, been told that you have cancer and you, after all, have what appears to be a very small and now absent support system.

You are entitled to your depression, your despair, your tears, kay-b. They are to be expected, and are good for you, I believe, up to a point.

But, I am thinking as well of something I read somewhere recently, that if you are not FEELING happy, you can at least ACT happy, and surprisingly or not, eventually you will FEEL happy. Something to that effect, that is, that there is much to be said for taking action, for standing up and fighting.

It does wonders. It really does.

At the very least, if your depression/grief has been lasting for any extended length of time, consider therapy, some third party to talk to who understands the stages of grief, who understands what you are experiencing, at least in a theoretical way.

I will also suggest that you try to spend some time in the Chat Room on this very site, where you are apt to find a range of folks both survivors of various cancers and caregivers for same, with talk that wanders far away from cancer (a good thing, kay-b, a very good thing - to go somewhere else, to food and family and job and television and music and whatever - without the baggage of cancer, because, as survivors and caregivers, we do not insist that it come with us when we go on these wandering chats).

Again, you are not alone.

Take care,

Joe