Meltdown of Partner

Hi Lola12,  You might want to repost your question in the "newly diagnosed" area. You might get more responses there. That said, I am almost one year into treatment. I have been married 28 years and this has been the hardest year of our marriage by far. Sometimes it has been maddening to me, because after all, I am the one with cancer, so why is he having such a hard time with this? But I have heard that being the non-cancer partner can be very hard. I have a good friend who has been stage 4 for 14 years. She is incredibly strong. She said it was harder for her when her best friend got cancer than all the years she has been going through it herself. My husband has tried to be supportive and usually is. But I have found that I need to reach out to others as well. I have found great support from other women with breast cancer and from my sister. My husband has gotten some counseling during this period as well and it has really helped him.

It sounds like your partner is really scared. My husband and I were really scared for the first month or so after diagnosis. I thought about dying, and would I live to see my teenage daughter graduate from high school, etc. Then we gradually got used to it and came to accept that this year was just going to be a really tough one. I don't think you can skip that initial period of being scared. I think the things you could do would be to listen to her concerns, talk about it as much as she wants to, talk to other people who have breast cancer, talk to people who have gotten through it and gone on to have active lives, etc. If someone wants to tell you a horror story, tell them you don't want to hear it. I found it extremely helpful to watch movies, go out and see friends, etc. Believe it or not you can have fun, even during treatment! There are difficult parts of treatment, but you need to keep reminding yourselves that treatment has gotten better over the years. And you should feel really fortunate you did catch it early. You are going to be treated and you are going to live. A good friend of mine with stage 4 lung cancer told me something very helpful when I was first diagnosed. She said, don't think about how you are going to die, think about how you are going to live. It is excellent advice. Don't let the thought of cancer ruin your life! And keep looking around this site. You will read that some people have a very hard time with treatment, but more people have only a moderately hard time, and some get through it fairly easily. Good luck and let us know how things go!