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Hello, looking for support


Kelly

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Hello all -

I am a woman who is dealing with a man I love dearly, facing prostate cancer.  I am unsure what to say here, except that I feel very lonely, and very scared.  His cancer was fairly well controlled until the last three weeks - he had neurosurgery, and since then, has had some issues.  He did take the latest therapy they offered, and they are hoping for some shrinkage of the tumor, and then to do a course of radiation - no one, thankfully, has not given us hope that he can have more time - but I am scared, because it seems that since the surgery, he has not done well, and I am losing my mind with worry and anxiety.

I just wanted to tell someone. 

Thanks.

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Hi there...with my dad's cancer I learned that there will be good days and definetely days when nothing is gonna go ok, please know you are not alone.  I hope today was a better day for you.  Feel free to open up your heart and pour how you feel here or in a journal, I know for me it made all the difference to have a place to vent out my feelings.

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Thanks for replying.  Basically, he has prostate cancer, went on alternative hormone therapy (Casodex) for approximately a year, then came east, met me, and then we decided to go to Dana Farber.  He was majorly depressed for a while, and really couldn't deal with treatment options, but then we found out that although the cancer remained inoperable (it was from the beginning), they felt he could go on Lupron and start radiation.  The RO (radiation oncologist) felt slightly different - she felt that he really needed to get his depression under control before the radiation could start - so we scrambled around, found him several different psychiatrists, found him a PCP, went back to the midwest for two weeks to straighten out some insurance, financial and other "housecleaning" issues, and then came back.  He is on a new antidepressant, feeling better, feeling healthy.  Then, we are back for a few days, waiting for the radiation appointment, and he gets a bad cold and his eye gets lazy.  We go to see the PCP (first available, the following Monday, the day before the RO appointment) and he sends him for a CT scan and MRI.  There is a small mass (approx. 2 cm) on his pituitary gland.  Rest of the scans are clean.  Neurosurgeon feels this is unrelated, may have been there for a while, easy to remove.  They do the neurosurgery, and all heck has broken loose.  The mass is related to the prostate cancer.  Suddenly, he needs a catheter - he never needed one before.  Then he is having bowel issues - never had them before.  Then, he develops this right flank pain, prompting another visit to the ER, where the ER doctor freaks out (different hospital than the surgery) and sort of refuses to do much for the pain except say "he has prostate cancer!".  We know this.  He is getting radiation for two weeks to the head, routine for a neuroendocrine tumor, then we were supposed to get the Lupron injection, and start the countdown to radiation for the prostate.  Now he has hydronephrosis and flank pain and constipation and a catheter, and the RO decides to have a "stern" talk with him and basically scares the crap out of him that he can't wait any longer for the Lupron and so he has the injection.

Me?  I can't seem to get a hold of my emotions.  I feel so pushed away, so alone, and I feel so bad because I am alternating crying and trying to do everything and take care of everything and work full time and take care of him, plus my mom has breast cancer and my dad was in the hospital for his heart, I have a cyst on my ovary that needs to be evaluated, and my sister is not talking to anyone and I don't know why. 

So, I am frustrated and he won't do what he is supposed to do (eat, get up and walk around, stop taking laxatives), and then I get mad at him, and then I feel guilty and bad, and then I think I am ruining everything, and then I apologize and then he has stopped telling me he loves me, and when I told him - listen, I am frustrated, you are not doing what you are supposed to, and you are pushing me away, and I need to know you are in this with me and you are going to try - and he tells me that he loves me but he has enough to deal with without me.  I try, I really do, try and understand that he has so much stuff in his head, but so do I and other people to worry about besides....so this has created some stress, and I just wanted to tell someone, anyone, that I don't mean to be selfish, I know this is hard for him, but I am scared and worried, and I don't want to say those things to him.

Wow, what a ramble.

 

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I think how you feel is perfectly normal.  I realized with my dad that he tried to keep everyone away, I guess it's their way to protect us from their own pain and worries.  You are doing a terrific job trying to handle so many things at once,   I have heard good reviews on Lupron.

Hang in there

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Red,

    It's ok, and you aren't alone.  My dad is just finishing up his fight was prostate cancer.  It had spread before the doctors even found it.

    You don't have to look after everybody even though it appears that you want to.  Remember to look after you.

 

Nicki

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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

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