Care Giver Blues

[irishteddybear]

Hello I am A 31 year old Male living in Hamilton Ontario. I am a full time care giver to my wife who is 54 and is suffering from terminal breast cancer. The cancer has moved into her bones and lungs and liver and the docs are giving her 2 years. We have been together for 5 years and 4 years and 6 months of those 5 have been cancer related. I have beent here every step of the way and we thought she was going to beat it until it came back this time after being cancer free for almost 3 years. She has limited mobility and walks around the house with a walker because the cancer ate ate her vertabra and broke 2 of them. When we leave the house she has to be pushed around by me in a wheelchair. The main reason I have came onto this site is to meet new friends because I don't really have much of a reliable social network and also to share stories with others in my position. Being a caregiver fulltime to the one you love can and is overwhelming at times and it's always nice to have someone to talk to. Well I hope you leave some comments and thanx for listening. Jim

[DawnFisher]

Jim,

Welcome to Beyond Indigo.  I'm so sorry to hear about your wife.  It can be overwhelming - especially when your friends are probably all young adults, busy and naive about what you are going through.  They might be afraid because they don't know what to say or do.  You will here a lot of cliches like "let me know if there's anything I can do."   They say that because they don't know what else to say.  It's perfectly alright to tell them what you need.  It's alright to say - I need a break and a listening ear or I need some help grocery shopping, etc.  You may have to guide them.  Many have never had to deal with the effects that cancer has on someone their own age.   Re-read some of the posts in other topics and join in.  Sometimes it takes awhile for someone to respond to this topic - as many are like you - they are overwhelmed with caretaking duties.  So don't be discouraged if you don't get a lot of replies right off the bat. 

Take care,

Dawn

Beyond Indigo

[irishteddybear]

Hey thanx for the post and the encouraging words. Yes I will check out the other posts and see what everyone else is going through.thanx again.Jim

[cheryl36]

Hello Jim, My name is Cheryl and I have been a member here for awhile now.  I am 38 and at the age of 34 I was a caregiver for 7 1/2 months for my 38 year old husband , who was a young very healthy man with huge plans for us!  We were living the American dream..litterally!  We were just waiting for the permits to open a second business in Florida, which we were planning to retire to this year infact.  Until April 15th Of 2004.  When he was dx with a rare type of Brain cancer.  Being a caregiver is not only exhausting, but (for a lack of better words) wears you down.  When you are the only primary caregiver, such as I was, I didn't even have time to grieve at all.   I bathed him, and carried him as much as possible. ( he gained 100lbs from the steriods) I still grieve, and it hits me when I least expect it.  It will be 4 years for me November 28th.  But there isn't a day that goes by I don't think of him.  I now have 3 bulging discs and in need of surgery, due to all the lifting and all for him.  But I would do it all over again for him!  I was with him 24/7 I didn't have anyone to talk to either, and I never got to go out alone, no one would help.  Funny though, when my husband passed, his family thought they would TRY to help themselves to our business, and houses, down to our furniture.  But that is a whole other topic in itself.  I am on here everyday reading everyone's thoughts and feelings, and it is so heartbreaking.  I can tell you something I have learned.  You have to take very good care of yourself!  I am not saying that to be greedy, I am saying that, because who is going to take care of you?  If you have a chance to get away for a little while, just go to a mall, or a movie, or anything, you need to do that!  I never had that chance, and God knows I so needed it.  I am terribly sorry for all that you have to go through!!! I am also sorry I didn't start out with that very sentence.  I just jumped right into my own senerio, and I totally didn't think of your feelings first. Please forgive me, I am so not an insensitive person, infact, I am very sensitive!  I wish you the very best, and may God Bless You always!!!    Cheryl

[irishteddybear]

Wow,thanx for that awesome post it sounds just like something I would say myself being that I am in the same position you where in. Ya i'm really sorry to hear that he passed away but it sounds like you are still strong and moving on. I know when my wife passes I will always remember here and there will be constant reminders all around me of times we spent together. Ya, I know when someone passes away the so called loved ones around come out of nowhere and thats where the fighting over possesions takes place death is awful but it makes it worse when that type of thing happens. So I take you are still living in the States I 'm here in Canada Ontario. My wife just recently went off chemo because she has been on it for 6 months and it's wearing her down. The doctors only had her on a small dose of chemo to try and keep the cancer down and they said we want you to have some type of quality of life. We kind of joke about that because chemo makes you feel like crap..lol..the cancer is in her bones so they say there is no cure just waiting and praying. Ya it's kind of funny how you can spend 24/7 with someone everyday thats when you know you are with the person who is meant for you but, that in it self makes it even sadder because you know you don't have the rest of your life together. I get breaks 2 times a week where a nurse comes in for 4 hours and watches her while I go out most of the time I don't want to leave. I just end up going for coffee or walking downtown and window shop..lol..I don't really have any friends I can rely on or turn to so my days away are really boring..well thank you so much for reading my post and sharing your story with me..it's always nice to hear someones elses story and feel free to write back..take care and good luck..Jim

[karolynca]

Hi Jim, I hope and pray things are OK with you both, keep us posted.

[newlywedwife]

 

 

[Kelly]

Dear Members,

We are excited to mention that we are moving to a more new and improved message boards on MONDAY MORNING AUGUST 9th! The boards will be done for a few hours while we are making the conversation. Remember we posted information about this move a month ago. For some of you this might seem a bit sudden,  but when we were reviewing the site we determined the current message board you are using is out of date and the company that designed it is no longer in existence. The good news is this new message board will have new features that have been requested in the past like more fields we can add to your profiles and a chat room up to 20 people at one time. If we find the chat room is bursting at the seams we will add additional room for extra people. All your old posts, private messages and such will be migrated to the new message board. You might have to put up your profile picture again but not sure. The new company will be doing the migration for us. Here is a short list of some of the new features on the board:

- Custom Profile Fields

- Users can customize their profile pages by selecting a background color or background image, with tiling options.

- Facebook and Twitter Integration

- users can respond to multiple posts at once with "mini-quote"

- Pinned discussion threads - like welcome to our board etc.

- Announcements made across some boards or the entire message board

- Search: Users can easily find all content generated by a particular member, by clicking the 'Find Content' button that appears on the main profile page, or in the Mini Profile Popup which can be accessed throughout the board. The results page allows content to be filtered by application, as well whether the member created it or merely participated in it.

- Privacy: allows users to sign in anonymously, hiding them from the online users list. Users also have the option to disable personal conversations and user-to-user emails, as well as ignore other users if necessary.

The next exciting piece of news about the new message board is it will have a new domain name of www.grieving.com for search engine optimization purposes. It will still be apart of Beyond Indigo and can be found through www.beyondindigo.com. We will be redirecting your current URL's to this new domain name but we might miss a few. If that is the case simply go back to www.grieving.com or www.beyondindigo.com to find your message board thread. We will try to make the transition as seamless as possible.

The bottom line is the new board will give us room to grow our community and more options to interact better with each other.

If you have any questions please direct them to feedback@beyondindigo.com.

Kelly Baltzell, MA

CEO/President

Beyond Indigo Family

[Derry]

I am saddened to see how few responses there are to the posts around here.

....and keep running into talk of a New Forum

Is Indigo Blue the old one or the new one?

Am I in the OLD forum?

Confuddled