One Woman's Story of Terminal Breast Cancer.....

(13) Before you read this please note this is not MY story but I'm publishing it on behalf of a 
        lady who asked that her terminal cancer story be shared.  
       NOTE:  Be aware that it is very confronting.

Out of respect for this lady I am keeping it anonymous and posting it exactly as she wrote it apart from spacing it out to make it easier to read and an explanatory addition in brackets.   She was about to enter a hospice.

"Living” with Cancer

What a laughable statement. Living with cancer is an oxymoron. You wake up everyday with your mortality staring you in the face. Hearing that time clock ticking away...tick tick tick. Never knowing how you are going to feel that day. Which personality are you going to start with. You take fist fulls of pills, poisons and potions just to partially function and get through your day. It’s supposed to kill the cancer but it’s a slow march to your death. Your inevitable fate. The treatment for cancer is worse than the cancer itself. You can’t plan anything because it’s a gamble if you are even going to feel like a person that day. Not to mention you are still expected to act like nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine and life is to resume as normal.

“Living” with cancer?  Is it living when you can’t sleep for days or you sleep for days at a time?  Is it living when one minute your teeth are chattering because you are freezing cold and the next minute you are burning up and dripping sweat and then back to the cold. You can’t get comfortable, toss and turn to find the slightest bit of comfort. You have disabling pain that makes you want to scream and cry. You can’t leave your house because you have exploding diarrhea or your so constipated you can’t move. You crave something to eat and you take one bite and it tastes nothing like you know it is supposed to. You have nausea so bad you can’t eat anything or your puking everything you put in your body. 

The neuropathy in your hands/feet make it impossible to walk right, hold things in your hands without dropping them. 

The constant worry and fear and anger and blaming yourself, the why’s and what if’s. You need blood transfusions and fluids and vitamins and supplements and constantly trying to fight to keep your body going. Hospital visits, multiple doctors appointments, scan after scan, biopsy after biopsy, you are poked and prodded. You feel like a science experiment. Is that living with cancer?  Your brain is gone, checked out completely. You can’t remember things, mix up or can’t even find the words. You feel yourself slowly going crazy. 

Cancer takes everything from you. It has taken my hair, my breasts, my ovaries, my uterus, my skin, my blood, my toenails fell off, my teeth, slowly they keep taking parts out of me, multiple surgeries and procedures, my sanity, my will, my fight, not to mention my friends. 

I’m sick of hearing they (my friends) just can’t deal or they are so hurt so they bow out. People say they are there for you and they pray for you and they think of you often. Really? Really do ya? Where are you? Where is that support when I actually need it. I know people get busy and i don’t expect people to drop their lives for me but a text message takes seconds and goes a long way.

Cancer has taken more than enough from me. I don’t even feel like a person anymore let alone a woman. It ruins marriages, relationships with your kids, and tests your faith to no end. Some people lose faith altogether. Your husband can’t even look at you naked anymore let alone touch you. It takes your intimacy, your trust, your self worth and value. Is this “living” with cancer?

People tell you they don’t understand what you must be going through. They wish they had the right words to say so they stay silent. Well guess what? There are no wrong words!!!!! Supporting someone in silence is not supporting them. Say something, anything is better than nothing. I guarantee you it will make their day. It may take them a few days or weeks to respond to you but on a good day they will reach out and i guarantee you your simple joke or emoji or kind thought or quote or bible verse or anything will help them through their day. Don’t get mad at them for not answering your call or text or going to your party. Each and everyday is an incomprehensible struggle for someone living with cancer. They have never felt more alone in their lives.

Strength, will, fight, hope...all come from support. If you want to know what someone with cancer is going through...what i said here, it’s just the tip of a titanic size iceberg."  

That's where she finished writing.  I, for one, applaud the courage she showed on her own behalf but mainly on the behalf of other women in her situation and for those who may be a step behind her,  for speaking out so openly and bravely.  I hope that it will not be lost, for her sake, because she asked for her story to be shared as widely as possibly to help people understand the real truth.  For me, it has changed my view of terminal breast cancer from a vague concept of someone who is on pain medication and is mainly sleeping to a very human, realistic view and I hope it does the same for many others who know women in this situation and don't know how to help   Yes, it's confronting  and yes, it's frightening, but I believe it's time that the reality of terminal cancer stopped being hidden from view and was brought out into the light so that as many people as possible are reached and are touched by it.

In my next blog, I'd like to go back to what happened between leaving hospital and finding a place on a trial because it wasn't a two step process ~