I am tired of being strong

dsj, it doesn't matter what stage you are be it Zero or Four, cancer is cancer and you have every right to feel scared and helpless just like the rest of us......Go ahead and cry, scream rage or whatever you feel like doing......You don't have to be "strong" all the time...You are after all human and are entitled to your feelings......I got tired of being strong too and hearing people tell me to be "positive"......Frankly I told my friends and co workers if one more person told me to be "positive", I was "positive" I would punch someone!......No one knows how you feel but YOU!......It is YOUR life not theirs!......I wish I knew who started with telling cancer patients to be positive cause I would positively kick them in the arse!.........Good luck with your surgery and please PM me if you like....I will PM my phone number to you if you would like to talk to someone....I am 3 yrs out from a stage 1 IDC diagnosis with grade 3 DCIS.......I am doing very well...The waiting is the hardest thing and surgery is hard too but once you get through that part the rest just goes right along.......

DSJ, Don't feel you have to be strong all the time. I've practically lived on valium in the last month or so, and since my lumpectomy on Tues. ... well, I'm STILL taking it while I wait for results. This is a rough thing to go through. My thoughts are with you during the next few days. I certainly felt anxious before Tuesday! Post and vent away... try to find pleasant distractions if you can.

Jill 

I agree with all replies above.  Cancer is cancer and by its very nature it is terrifying and not frequently easy to deal with.  I was lucky to have a Stage 0 DCIS 15 years ago.  I had a small lumpectomy which was remarkably painless and easy to get over (totally opposite my pre-operative fears and worries).  Now I have Stage III squamous cell - and I'm gratedul for no mets.  Now I am going throught chemo, with surgeries and reconstruction planned for the near future.  I foucus on what I am grateful for now.  My husband and adult kids have been remarkable and are always there for me.  Best luck to you.  I ofter feel "over it," so I change the subject, take a nap, read a book or do anything until I can deal with today.

Hi dsj,  I hear ya!  This is a scary time.  I've been told I have a very treatable kind of cancer...so that's what I tell everybody else and I try to convince myself. At first I was a poster child for confidence and sunshine...but lately I'm seeing that that's just a thin mask.  It doesn't take much to push me off center and I get real weepy or really angry.        

I want to be a big brave girl. For some reason I have this feeling that if I'm scared that in someway I'm insulting those that have it worse.I start feeling guilty when I'm not all upbeat and chipper.   It's hard to explain.  Like ya know when a really skinny girl starts complaining about how fat she is?  Everybody rolls their eyes and dismisses her.    Maybe my "treatable" cancer means it's not really real and I shouldn't worry or complain?   I know that's not true but I think some people think that. 

dsj,

I feel like you are reading my thoughts!

yes, we caught it early...but it's STILL cancer...it's still real...it's still our lives....it's still messing up our lives....and it's ours!

It's OK to cry.  It's OK to vent.  And if others don't get it, that is THEIR problem. You have a RIGHT to grieve.  You have a right to be sad, a right to be mad, and a right to be angry.

This is taking away our normal.....our safety zone....life as we knew it.  Life will never, ever be the same.  Face it.  Yes, we will come out stronger in the end.....but that's down the road.  Right now, we are traveling that road, and some of us are further down that road than others.... but we will eventually reach that destination.   

We're all in this together, and we'll all have our ups and downs....I have also found out that there are behavioral oncologists who can help us through this....I didn't find out until I was almost two months post BMX.....ask about it.  THEY understand....

praying for all of you.....and all of US!

blessings...robin

Another thing - it's early, and supposedly not life-threatening, and the lumpectomy wasn't that bad... but it's a little less than a week out and half my breast is numb. Can still barely feel ice packs on it. I'm glad the nipple still seems to work, but I wonder when and IF the feeling is going to return. If it doesn't, well... that sucks. And it sucks to have to keep saying "could be worse!" I'm done with that. It will suck having a breast with half sensation, and I'm not going to lie and say I don't care.

I feel like I lead a double life...In "cancer world," I know I'm truly lucky. When I get out in the "real world," I feel the "why me?" feeling. What did I do to deserve this? I ate right, exercised, etc. My drug addicted, alcoholic brother has been abusing himself for years yet he seems indestructible. I have played by the rules and have a family who depends on me and I get cancer?!?!?! Considering the frustratingly random nature of this disease, I try not to think about it, but sometimes it just sneaks up on me.

I agree with all the posts here.  I was diagnosed a week before Christmas.  I had abnormal mammagram on 10/21/09.  I went  for a second opinion on 10/27 and asked my twin sister to accompany me.  The radiologist that day said "If I were a betting man, I would say its cancer, DCIS, 100% curable."  He walked out and my sister said " its the drinking you know".  I said "What, I don't drink unless I am at a function or something .  I'm not really a drinker".  She said what about college? (over 30 years ago).  I was so hurt and offended, like she was saying I did something to bring this on.  My first diagnosis after needle biopsy was "benign, but still has to come out,  its dysplasia".  After first excisional, it was DCIS.  I still haven't told my sister, who I normally would share everything with.  She only knows what I was told after needle biopsy.  I'm still hurt and now I just don't talk to her very much.  I am grateful I found these boards.  I finish rads on 3/19/10 and am counting down the days.  I feel I will be fine.       

DSJ-

I avoided the dilemma you and your husband are facing by not sharing my initial biopsy results with anyone other than my husband and one sister in law. Being secretive is not my style, but I knew I couldn't deal with the uncertainty pre-lumpectomy. You have reassured everyone about your diagnosis and prognosis and they are going about their business while you are and dh are not only dealing with a diagnosis of cancer, but are anticipating your lumpectomy - whether anything else will show up to change the diagnosis from DCIS. My wish for you is the wish I had for myself and that wish came true, that the lumpectomy pathology report will be in line with the core/needle biopsy pathology report.

Post lumpectomy - I was apparently so chirpy and upbeat when I informed family and friends of my diagnosis and proposed treatment, a dear friend accused me of not taking breast cancer seriously, that she had friends who had died from it. Talk about deflating a positive attitude!  I agree that DCIS places us in a very strange place and I am very grateful to be able to visit this board and communicate with others who understand.

Julie E

dsj - I know exactly how you feel.  The waiting is the worst.  After my core needle biopsy which was done on a Monday, I was told I would get the results in a day or two.  I got the call late Tuesday that they sent the sample to the Mayo clinic.  Friday I got the results "benign but still has to come out".  I  felt quite relieved.  Then I met with the BS two weeks later who told me the surgery was really an excisional biopsy and I would have to again wait for results.  Surgery was 12/8/09 and I didn't find out until 12/17/09 because that sample was also sent to Mayo!  Talk about being on a roller coaster!  I was so anxious I lost quite a bit of weight.  Now, two and half mos. later I feel more relaxed and in control.  DCIS is not the end of the world.  When I first met my rad onc on 12/28 and she saw how anxious I was, she practically hollered at me:" You have zero chance of dying from this!".  Then she apologized and said that the people who work in field sometimes seem insensitive.  I believe that this can be true at times, but is probably a reflection of just how successful they are in treating this.  When I met with my BS before my second lumpectomy, I told him I had not yet told my children and wasn't sure how to tell him.  His response was "its just DCIS".  The doctors who work with this everyday are so confident of their ability to treat DCIS that they seem a little cavalier.  I do want you to know that in a few months you will be in a much better place and that all the worrying doesn't help and may actually make things worse as there is research that suggests stress makes it harder for your body to control cancer cell growth.  Good luck and try to relax. 

Kitchenwitch - Thanks for your post.  I agree with you, its not the drinking.  Along with all the emotions one feels when diagnosed, guilt is not one that helps.  

 I posted this on a diffrerent thread, but thought it might be worth a repost....

The late Molly Ivins wrote this column for TIME magazine:

Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.

One of the first things you notice is that people treat you differently when they know you have it. The hushed tone in which they inquire, "How are you?" is unnerving. If I had answered honestly during 90% of the nine months I spent in treatment, I would have said, "If it weren't for being constipated, I'd be fine." In fact, even chemotherapy is not nearly as hard as it once was, although it still made all my hair fall out. My late friend Jocelyn Gray found the ultimate proof that there is no justice: "Not just my hair, but my eyebrows, my eyelashes-every hair on my body has fallen out, except for these goddam little mustaches at the corner of my mouth I have always hated."

Another thing you get as a cancer patient is a lot of football-coach patter. "You can beat this; you can win; you're strong; you're tough; get psyched." I suspect that cancer doesn't give a rat's ass whether you have a positive mental attitude. It just sits in there multiplying away, whether you are admirably stoic or weeping and wailing. The only reason to have a positive mental attitude is that it makes life better. It doesn't cure cancer.

My friend Judy Curtis demanded totally uncritical support from everyone around her. "I smoked and drank through the whole thing," she says. "And I hated the lady from the American Cancer Society." My role model.

The late Alice Trillin wrote some brilliant essays on being a cancer patient, and I found her theory of "the good student" especially helpful. When you are not doing well at cancer-barfing and getting bad blood tests and generally not sailing through the whole thing with grace and panache-you have a tendency to think, Help, I'm flunking cancer, as though it were your fault. Your doctor also tends to look at you as though he is disappointed. Especially if you start to die on him.

You don't get through this without friends. Use them. Call them, especially other women who have been through it. People like to help. They like to be able to do something for you. Let them. You will also get sick of talking about cancer. One way to hold down the solicitous calls is to give your friends a regular update by e-mail, if you have it. If you work, I recommend that you keep right on doing so (unless you hate your job). Most companies are quite good about giving you time off when you need it, and working keeps you from sitting around and worrying.

Losing a part of a breast or all of one or both has, obviously, serious psychological consequences. Your self-image, your sense of yourself as a woman, your sense of your sexual attractiveness are going to be rocked whether or not you have enough sense to realize that tits aren't that important. I am one of those people who are out of touch with their emotions. I tend to treat my emotions like unpleasant relatives-a long-distance call once or twice or year is more than enough. If I got in touch with them, they might come to stay. My friend Mercedes Pena made me get in touch with my emotions just before I had a breast cut off. Just as I suspected, they were awful. "How do you Latinas do this-all the time in touch with your emotions?" I asked her. "That's why we take siestas," she replied.

As a final indignity, I have just flunked breast reconstruction. Bad enough that I went through all that pain for the sake of vanity, but then I got a massive infection and had to have both implants taken out. I'm embarrassed about it, although my chief cancer mentor, Marlyn Schwartz (who went to the Palm for lunch after every chemo session), has forbidden this particular emotion. So now I'm just a happy, flat-chested woman.
Molly Ivins was found to have Stage III inflammatory breast cancer in 1999

dsj - It has been nearly 4 months since my DCIS diagnosis.  I also tried to reassure everyone with my diagnosis:  early, curable, good cancer.   I do know that I am lucky to have been diagnosed at an early stage, but I still lost my breasts to BC.  I think for me, even harder than losing my breasts, is losing the sense of peace and safety within myself. 

You need to allow yourself to grieve, for your diagnosis, your breasts, your sense of safety, and your old life.  We all have to allow ourselves that time, and then we will have the strength to pull ourselves back up and keep moving forward.

And this hits it right on the head : Double life. That's exactly what it is. In one world, I'm definitely lucky. In the other, not so much.

Sally

I find it odd that I often end up consoling those who are just finding out about my cancer. I have held others' hands, watched them well up and cry, and hugged them to make them feel better. Crazy, isn't it?

I do respect the docs for telling me that I am lucky to have gotten DCIS, but I'd be a helluva lot luckier if I had never gotten cancer in the first place. I am a lousy patient, I guess.

DSJ, good luck tomorrow. Please do keep all of us posted on how the surgery goes. Praying for clean margins for you.