Whats it like having cancer or watching someone you care about deal with cancer?

Like Edgar I've tried to keep this thread at arms length. My wife died from breast cancer in 2004, so it does bring back memories, which have been more acute of late because her mother has just died, and I'm going through the same procedure.

I'm sorry to hear about your sister, if nothing else the chemo will extend her life. I am a great believer in healthy body, healthy mind. As long as there is life there is hope, even if it's a faint hope. Sometimes cancer can go into remission even when it seems hopeless, and I think the state of mind has a lot to do with it. Unfortunately my wife had a lousy childhood and low self-esteem, if she had been happier things may have turned out differently.

I wish you and her all the best, try to keep positive, it can't do any harm. You can be both optimistic and realistic at the same time. Chin up.

When I was ten my favorite aunt, my moms older sister died of breast cancer, then when I was 12 mom was diagnosed with the same horrible decease. She made if five years! When I was 22 my dad passed away from lung cancer. I just wanted to crawl in bed and sleep forever!

But I couldn’t, I Just had to stay positive.

If you can pull yourself through then you can push through anything. Be happy and enjoy life to the best of your ability. That’s what keeps me going.

That is quite a burden for a young man..or for any age person. You have my sympathy.

Just grazing the replies, I may be the only one posting who does NOT have cancer...

but I watched my grandmother die of it.
It was in her lymph-nodes in her neck at first. Directly due to smoking.
She received radiation and forever looked like she had a rancid sunburn across her face. To my recollection ( I was 19/20 ) she had a remission and I do not recall how, but it was found in the lymph-nodes on the inside of her leg a while later.
Again, radiation, treatment and it went away well enough to stop aggressive treatment.

What no one considered was that it had traveled. It filled her stomach, and I believe her large intestine.

My mother, my aunt and myself took care of her in the few months before her death in our home. She couldnt sit up, could not eat and wore a specific diaper because of the amounts of liquid she was passing.

I still remember my aunts voice through the baby monitor when she found her dead.

It wasnt that it was a hugely traumatic situation. We had plenty of notice and we watched it ..e very single step of the way.
It was right after that, i went to school to work in retirement homes and nursing homes. Dont know why.

Cancer is an ugly disease, one that CAN be cured and the body CAN recover from.. but since our society has so many things in it now that can cause that to spring up in anyone, its almost unavoidable.

No you are not because I don't have cancer.My guess is that you are a caring and nice person.

I am in Hong Kong, and am watching my wife die of a very aggressive breast cancer right this night. She went into her first chemo session today, then found out her bone marrow has problems which rule out chemo, and her heart has problems which rule out target therapy. It is 3 a.m., and I know I am not going to get any sleep tonight.

I feel like I have this hole where my heart is right now. I am afraid of turning off the light in this bedroom because I am afraid I will not remember what she looks like. I am afraid of being in this room at the moment because I can't deal with being alone in here, without her voice, without her presence.

The only thing that tells me I can't do anything dumb is the thought of our two year old son, and that she wants him to grow up happy.

You can get through it. It's ******* awful and really knocks you for six, but you can do it. Treasure what time you have left with your wife, and pour your energy into your two year old.

My children helped me get through it.

Thanks. I know I will have to get through it, for my two year old son if no one else. But it is just so damn hard to take on short notice, when she was only diagnosed/confirmed with breast cancer two weeks ago and already she is deteriorating so quickly.

Hello, Capt, welcome to a2k. This is a mindblowing and heartwrenching time. Do the best you can and talk to us if you want - maybe start a discussion thread of your own on all this - or not. It doesn't really matter, but perhaps later you'd like to have it to reread.

I lost my wife to brain cancer in 1989. She was very brave, but her last years were plagued with dementia. But it all passed eventually, as it will with you. You are about to see how strong you are.
Eventually we will all die.
Please consider my signature line.

It does seem especially hard given your short time span. My wife took about 2 and a half years from the original diagnosis, but nothing really prepares you for this.

I don't have any real advice other then gritting your teeth and getting through it. The first year without her was the worst. After that it does get more tolerable.

My mom passed a few years back from a uterine sarcoma which moved to other places to include her lungs. The hardest part was being quiet in the face of her determination to do Chemo which was not going to help her and which did not, but which did take away any opportunity to make good the last few months of her life.

Hi Capt...

I am so very sorry and I can't imagine how you are feeling, it's in the now..

My heart breaks for you.. And, in each and every story I have just read as well, for all.

I typed another paragraph and deleted it... It's hard to be strong but be that.. Stay with us as well.. You are amongst some fantastic, honest people here...

Let us be there for you.

I just discovered this topic. I've only skimmed through the posts, and for good reason. I'm already in tears. This subject is difficult for me.

CaptSkyfire, my heart bleeds for you and all the other A2K members who have either survived cancer or have suffered the loss of a loved one to this hateful disease.

My mother came down with breast cancer when I was 13 years old. She underwent a radical mastectomy on the very day President Kennedy was assassinated. She was an attractive woman. This surgery was a blow to her self-esteem. She had to undergo chemotherapy for about a year after the surgery.

Ten years later she came down with liver cancer. I was depressed for the entirety of the last 13 or so months of her life. I was afraid to see her during the last two months of her life because I knew her physical condition had deteriorated dramatically.

Finally, in October I went to the hospital. As I remember, a nurse escorted me to her room, where she left me alone with her. I was horrified. It was absolutely horrible. She had developed jaundice. Her face seemed to have been disfigured. I couldn't stand to look at her. She couldn't even talk. She just made a gutteral sound. I just sat there in a chair by her bed and cried, and I'm crying now as I write this. When the nurse returned, I rushed out of the room crying because I just couldn't take it anymore. I hated what the cancer did to her body. I rushed outside to my car and drove back to a duplex I was then sharing with my sister. Our mother died two days later. She was only 53 years old. For years I wondered if she was even aware of my presence in the hospital room. I was afraid if she had been aware that she might have been hurt by the sight of my fleeing from the hospital room. But I just couldn't stand it! If she was aware, perhaps she understood.

Her funeral seemed to be surreal.

For months I would have dreams in which she was still alive. I remembered feeling convinced in my dreams that she really was alive; but, of course, when I would wake up, I'd realize she was dead.

My mother was a wonderful woman. She was an intellectual who had a lot of insight about the political and social issues of the day. She had opposed racial discrimination as a young woman before there was even a civil rights movement. She stood up to her own mother, who was a racist bigot. But most of all, she was kind and considerate of all people. She was dignified and had a lot of class. One of my friends once told me she was "a real lady." I owe her and my father, who is also now deceased, for the values I hold dear today.

I hate cancer with every fiber of my being. I also fear it.

Again, I express my sympathy to every A2K member (and anyone simply reading this, for that matter) whose lives have ever been touched by cancer. It's a horrible disease that has hurt a lot of people.

I am so sorry for all your losses, I feel for you and I wish you all the strength to get through this.

aw..
it would be a very tragic event..
u really need deeper understanding and passionate about what u are doing.

Thank you except extend her life? At this point she can hardly walk or see. I don't get it. There is quality vs quantity.

There is more time to spend with her though. Isn't it her decision?

I want to spend time with her. It doesn't work out that way. She wants me to figure out her medical bills, go through her emails, spend time with her dogs, keep up her website and on and on.

Yes, it is her decision.

It must be hard enough already without having to worry about medical bills, I was forgetting about that. That's something I didn't have to worry about.