Posted by Jacky on May 13, 2009, 5:31 pm, in reply to "depression"
70.75.62.60
depression is a normal part of the process - 75% of patients, they believe, become clinically depressed within 2 years or less of dx.
At first you are so damn busy, treatments, stiff upper lip, taking care of everyone else's fear - it really helps take the mind off how just plain SAD it is to have a cancer diagnosis. But like all grief, it doesn't go away, it just goes under.
Now you have a future to look forward to, without treatment, and you don't know what you want normal to look like now, you don't know what you've lost, what you've gained, not yet, and you don't have all that STUFF to do, so now it's got a chance to come at ya.
Thoughts like you are having are normal - you are completely lost, which means you don't know what to look forward to, and right now it feels like you are going to feel THIS way forever, and who wants to feel THIS way forever?
If you knew you had to endure it for some preset period of time, it would be much easier to say 'oh that's just silly old me, really smart me knows this will pass'.
Well let me tell you. You just have to endure for some preset period of time. Really. It will get better. You'll end this phase, the treatment phase, and you'll start the recovery and rebuilding phase, and somewhere along the way you'll think about some of this in the past tense - 'when I HAD treatment', that sort of thing. So you just tell yourself 'Hey, yeah, I'm sad, I'm lonely, I'm depressed, and I wish, right now that I were dead, even though I'm not gonna do anything about that! But that's okay, because in reality I have FAITH that this will pass and the sun will shine in my heart again. I just have to wait for that.'
I believe that grief is a way of honouring the loss, and you really have to honour the fact that you have been to a very very awful place the last few months, and it's been hard. The denial stuff is great, but every once in a while ya gotta just mope. Then you move on till the next time.
Responses: