STEAM ROOM FOR ANGER

Micmel

I HATE DEATH. I HATE THAT MY FATHER HAS DIED. I HATE THAT CANCER HAS STOLEN SO MUCH FROM US ALL. I HATE I AM POWERLESS IN THIS LIFE. I HATED SEEING HIM SUFFER. I HATE GROWING OLDER. I HATE THIS AWFUL HEAVY HEART I CANNOT OUTRUN. I AM SOOO ANGRY AT LOSS. SO ANGRY.

Yndorian

Micmel, I'm so sorry for your lost. He rests in peace now, no more suffering, no more pain. I send you all my love fron the other side of the world. No more words to say in my rudiment english, I send you better toughts, my heart is with you because i've read all about your fight

Doodlegirl

I just started first round of chemo May 1. Yesterday, May 12, I found out my husband just started having an affair with his high school girlfriend. We have been together for 21 years. Crying and devastated I asked him why now? He said our relationship isn't fun and exciting anymore. When I asked him if he had true feelings for her he said yes. When I told him he had to chose he said he needed time. That was like a knife in my heart! I have to be physically and mentally healthy and secure to get thru chemo and radiation and told him if he couldn't then I would have to end it. After a while of thinking about it he said he didn't want to lose me and our life we've built. He calle her in front of me and ended it with her. But my trust is gone, my sense of security is gone and he is not the man I thought he was. I'm so lost and broken

mistyeyes

Oh Doodlegirl, I am sorry you have to deal with marriage problems on top of the cancer. I think it is almost impossible to deal with two big things at once. I do suggest some type of counseling for your marriage, he needs to grow up and step up to help you through this. That is if you decide to give him another chance. I will be thinking of you.

Micmel

Doodle~My heart is with you. I can understand why you would feel that way. Breathe deep and take one day at a Time. Strong women, stand their ground and can be loving at the same time, as its earned back. Let time speak. Let him earn it back. You deserve support and love you beautiful woman. He ending it, means a choice was made and you stood up and wereyour own strongest asset, and advocate. He will keep his head out of his ass and see the real world once again with out the smell of shit that surrounded him with it firmly placed up his anal cavity! Stay strong and make him earn your trust. It is not something that can be fixed over night and I know you don't know me From boo, but im damn proud of you!

runor

Micmel - every single word you wrote is true and legit. It hurts that people die. It hurts that we die. Powerlessness leads to frustration and anger and the feeling like your head is going to blow off your shoulders. I have no clue what to do about it. I just KNOW it. I hate this for you!

Betrayal

Dear Micmel:

For all the support and love you so unselfishly provide to others I wish I had better words to offer. I wish you comfort in the memories of your time with your father in the past and recently. He was loved, you were there when he died so he was not alone at the time of passing and no one could ask for a better daughter. May you find peace in knowing that he loved you and will always.They say that Cardinals are the souls of those we have lost, so I hope your Cardinal visits soon. Look for it and know it is him.

jaycee49

Doodle, I think you handled it exactly right. He needs to be totally finished with her. Maybe you could get some support with your chemo from the group here "starting chemo May 2019" and also maybe a little distraction. Here is the link to that group. Go to the end for the most recent posts.

starting chemo May 2019 group

movingsoccermom

Micmel,

Your rant was right on target. My Dad died in 2012 after a 7 year battle with colon cancer. I was FURIOUS for about a year and a half. My pain at losing him has become livable over the years, and ironically, one bright spot was he never lived to know that after he died, first my sister, then myself, then my Mom were all diagnosed with breast cancer. I look forward to the day when this disease is as eradicated as measles. My deepest sympathy for your loss.

Lita57

Once the trust is gone, it changes everything. My old boyfriend from graduate school "cheated" on me, and I forgave him...but in retrospect, I should have dumped him then and there. Wasted a few more "anxiety-producing" years on that relationship when I really should have moved on to greener pastures with someone else.

Oh well...live and learn.

L

bcincolorado

Oh micmel I am so sorry and my heart and prayers go out to you and your family.

Micmel

Betrayal~. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! I'm struggling. I have to take it day by day. No other choice. Thank you for your words of support they mean everything.

Moving~I am deeply sorry you ever felt what I am feeling now. I basically don't want to move, or even feel. My heart feels like it's bleeding... may we heal and learn how to feel joy in their memory. Thank you for sharing such profound moments in your life with me.

Bc~ thank you beautiful friend. Thank you

mara51506

Micmel, I am so very sorry for you and your family about the loss of your father. I am still struggling with my mother's own death recently. She suffered a long time herself until she got to hospice. Now that my house sale and packing up from there and getting new apartment are done, my own grief is still an issue. I can certainly empathize with how you are feeling as well. My sincere thoughts going out to you and your family.

nanette7fl

MIcmel I'm so sorry your Dad passed away. He is in peace now and healed. Now he is not in pain or suffering. He is there with those others who have passed on before him. There is no treachery there, no one pretending to care, He is always with you in your heart. Yes your heart is bleeding...the lose.....there is a hole in your heart and it will heal in time. It's hard to lose a parent. Sending you tons of (((hugs))) and prayers tor you and your family.

melza89

I need to vent about my biological dad who has spent my whole life refusing to acknowledge that I am his biological child to his wife and kids (I am from an affair). He found out about my bc dx from other relatives & I didn't want to keep my dx a secret. It's just that when anyone from my dad's side of the family has any significant news about me it always brings up my dad's stupid family drama that he refuses to deal with like a grown adult. His wife basically knows I'm his kid because it's one of those worst kept secrets but apparently doesn't want to deal with it either. We rarely have contact (he lives abroad) but when he does (like when he wanted to talk to me after finding out I have bc) he has to go out somewhere to call me or use someone else's phone so his wife doesn't know. It's ridiculous so I haven't tried to keep in touch, since I didn't want to accidentally say or do anything that would cause more drama. Sometimes I wish he had just decided to stay completely out of the picture instead of having weird ways of trying to stay in my life while hiding his non-secret for 40+ years. I just don't understand people sometimes!

kber

Melza - I think I understand your frustration!  Like, pick a lane, dude.

kber

So I have this one friend who, our entire 20 year relationship, has always been so freaking sure of herself.  She simply can't conceive of a topic where she knows less than someone else and she's really confident in putting forth her opinions.  Most of the time I can shrug it off.  She has other qualities that make her caring and charming and you take the bad with the good, right?

But since my diagnosis she's just a font of bad advice, confidently delivered.  For example, she thinks I really need to press my doctor about tamoxifen, even though I'm triple negative and it would not help.  I apparently should have been doing yoga this whole time, even on days I could not lift my head without puking.  I should be eating this and avoiding that, regardless of what my nutritionist advises.  You get the point.

Now she's really worried I'm rushing into a decision about surgery without thinking about it.  Girl, I've had 5 months to think about it while I did chemo.  I mean, yes, I've got gaps in my information which are now being filled in, but I've had plenty of time to build my decision tree.  I've created an imaginary model of "if / then" statements.  For example, if I test positive for a genetic predisposition, then mark a point for BMX.  If a lumpectomy is medically possible, mark a point for that.  Dense breasts - BMX.  No tumor visible on the post chemo mammo or MRI - lumpectomy.  As data comes in, I fill in the gaps and get closer to a decision, all with the common goal of increasing my odds of disease free survival.  I've told her this, but she's concerned I'm being too "clinical" and not processing or mourning my breasts or something.  I'm in the middle of a fire fight here!  I don't need someone questioning my judgement or decision making abilities.  Be supportive or be silent!

Cpeachymom

Holy crap Melza! I can totally relate! I actually told mine 10+ years ago that either you’re my father or you ain’t, I can’t do this halfway stuff anymore. I never heard from him again. He passed away last year. It’s messed with me my whole life.

melza89

Cpeachymom - good for you! I rarely talk to mine because he was out of the picture for a while and then I moved far away and lived with my mom & stepdad. He wanted to build some kind of father-daughter relationship with me when I was older, but I wouldn't have any of it since he wanted some kind of halfway relationship so he could keep deceiving his family. I am ok with having polite and infrequent conversations with him but he doesn't like that I don't treat him like he's my dad. Well duh!

runor

Kber - oh, don't you love that? Who knew that your friend was a medical expert and psychic master concerning your life and needs and decision making?

When I told my mom I had cancer she said if I'd have more regular mammograms I wouldn't be in this mess. Really? How is that? Is that because we know that having a mammogram is the same as an inoculation against breast cancer? Do all the women who have regular mammograms NEVER GET BREAST CANCER??? I did shout at my mom. I feel bad. I think she was having her own problems hearing her kid has cancer. This is not what any mother wants to hear. I am am mother. I never want to hear those words come out of my own kid's mouth. But still ..... people need to fill those horrible silences where pain might sneak in with random talking. It's a way to avoid saying, "Holy shit, this sucks so bad, I am so sorry that I don't know what to do or say to help you so instead I will talk like I know what I'm talking about and it will fill this space of awkward misery that we might have to experience. "

WHen I was young and could not imagine that I would ever have cancer (it's always the other guy) I remember saying I would refuse chemo. Nope, wouldn't do it. Not having it. I would bravely face death instead but I would never submit to chemo cause I just don't believe in it.

What a load of horse shit.

When I was diagnosed and real death by cancer stared me in the face I would have taken chemo. In fact I went to my hairdresser and told him to shave my head. I didn't want to do chemo but I didn't want to die either. Pick your poison - literally!! He said he would shave my head when my hair started falling out and my Oncoscore said chemo wouldn't do me one lick of good so I didn't do it. But I would have. Because in that desperate hour, from the inside looking out, it's a whole other ballgame. Your friend is still on the outside and she cannot possibly know what it's like to be in your shoes. She just can't. She talks to fill that void where you want to help someone and know there isn't a damn thing you can do. We are very bad at sitting with discomfort and emotional distress. She can't fix this. She doesn't know what to do with that. If she has other good qualities, you might have to keep cutting her slack as you say. But it's hard. We all know. It's very hard and very exhausting.

Artista964

doodle, once the trust is gone it's gone. How do you know he called her? Was it on speakerphone? Guys are sneaky. He needed time and now he calls. I say give him more time in the sense that I wouldn't ask anything of him. See if he stays by your side, if he shows up. You are at the start and have enough to deal with. See how tuned in he is to you without asking him. Your answer will be given there..

melza89

kber - Your friend sounds like she suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I have a friend who is low key panicking about me getting neoadjuvant chemo because she is convinced it will help the cancer spread and trying to hint I should find another doctor. She sent me one of those top doctor lists and I was like, yes my oncologist is on there. She previously had a different cancer with no chemo, and seems to think our situation is similar enough that mine should be treated the same way hers was (only surgery)...I'm sympathetic cause I'm wondering if she's psychologically reliving her own cancer nightmare. But on the other hand I don't want to be talked to like I don't know how to read or make a good decision based on available info & professional medical advice.

AliceBastable

So, I just saw a story on the national news that diet is a factor in having breast cancer. Uh huh. Have we ever seen studies covered on the news that basically blames men for their own prostate or other cancers? Or are women just easier targets?

bcincolorado

You should be able to make your own decisions. NO ONE has the exact same health issues going on or support systems. If your friend has gone through cancer already she should understand that. She has to be reliving it all since you have this going on now as well.

Beesie

AliceBastable, what frustrates me is that we know that weight control and diet are factors in many diseases, including various types of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. and in fact the influence of diet on breast cancer rates is not nearly as significant as it is for many other diseases. Yet we continually read about breast cancer and diet. Or breast cancer and alcohol. Or breast cancer and exercise. Or breast cancer and....

I think the issue is that breast cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers, and the simple truth is that for the vast majority of us, the medical and scientific communities have no idea why we develop breast cancer. So they look for excuses, easy answers to make up for the fact that they really are clueless. Ah, it's your diet! No, actually, for almost all of us, that's not what caused our breast cancer.

We all know that it's better for our health and longevity if we maintain a healthy diet, exercise regularly and maintain a healthy weight. That's a no brainer. I wish that instead of spending so much time and money on research to validate these intuitively obvious things, more time and money would be spent instead on finding out, at the cellular level, how breast cancer develops, so that drugs or vaccines can be created to stop these cell mutations from happening. And until then, how about putting more time and money towards the development of breast cancer treatments that are more effective than the ones we have today? Yes, it's great that endocrine therapy can reduce the risk of mets by ~35%, but who thinks that's enough? Or maybe into treatments that are less toxic, so that we don't have to expose ourselves to completely new health risks - heart disease, DVT/PE, endometrial cancer, osteoporosis, etc. - when we are treating and trying to reduce our risk from our breast cancer diagnoses?

But I guess it's just easier to get women to blame themselves for their breast cancer, so that they are more willing to accept that they have to go through these crappy treatments.

Meow13

Studies have become worthless, rarely do I even consider reading them. I agree with you Beesie spend the money and time on better treatments and targeted therapies. I know that nothing I did caused my breast cancer, so I ignore anything telling me otherwise.

AliceBastable

As much as I usually like Lester Holt (he kinda looks like my Dad did), I could have punched him after he read that study story, then smiled and said something like "Now you know what to do." Yeah, passing up that Snickers bar means no one will ever get breast cancer. Puh-leeeze.

Meow13

It seems like it continues despite our responses that you can't protect yourself from breast cancer. I never thought I would get cancer, no family history really excellent health. I eat right, exercise, do all the recommended screening. The reality is 1 in 8 get this no matter what you do.

melza89

Mainstream media doesn't seem to have any interest in actually educating people about bc..If they did people would know more about what symptoms to look out for and how much we don't know as far as what causes it. Like with typical mainstream health headlines it just become some dumbed down fear-mongering tag line for ratings like "Studies show eating ____ causes breast cancer" which is often misleading and a misinterpretation of the actual studies.

Beaverntx

Just read a report on the "diet study". While it was originally intended to investigate if a low fat diet would prevent the development of breast cancer (shown to not be the case in another study) the report actually related to low fat diet and mortality from breast cancer! Criticisms are already being published. Just another example of don't believe the very abbreviated report of research we hear on the nightly news!