I wrote the following to share with my husband
It’s easier to put in words how I have been feeling.
Basically I think I have expended so much mental energy over the last few months, even the last year or more, that I actually don’t feel like I have the energy to live. I have to admit that I have had thoughts of not wanting to live anymore and I know that doesn’t make sense when I went through so much physically to get rid of the cancer. I don’t think I have said this before, although I may have and have just forgotten, but I had come to some sort of peace and acceptance that I would not survive the operation that I almost didn’t know what to do with myself or feel when it sunk in that I had made it through the surgery. I feel so tired of everything that has happened over the past couple of years and whilst I dearly love you, Adam and Lucy, I can’t help feeling exhausted by life. To complicate things further, I also have this fear of the kids growing up without me and I know that this just doesn’t make sense when I am saying I am having thoughts of not wanting to be here anymore. I can only say the latter is probably the depression speaking whilst the fear of dying is the anxiety of living.
The below is my instagram post on a similar note:
Today I listened to my Personal Trainer (yes my attempt to get fit and healthy again and an effort to do something for me) tell me about her husband’s journey of cancer.
It was something she said today that really resonated with how I’ve been feeling in the last couple of months. It’s the aftermath and silence after the survival mode of getting through the diagnosis and treatment of cancer that can be just as difficult. It’s the crash of all the adrenaline of going from one appointment to another, to get through it all…. to survive. But the feelings feel just as intense now as it did then. As I read the blogs from BowelBabe, I can’t help but break down in tears as it brings up those fears of dying and leaving my children behind. Those fears were so overwhelming back then but they feel just as overwhelming now. The fear of dying is still ever present and so acute. The danger is of spiralling into the darkness of the thoughts.
There’s a song I associate with my journey that I started listening to around the time I found out about my thymoma. Right On Time by Brandi Carlisle. These words ring true the most “It wasn’t right, but it was right on time”. I will always be grateful that it was found early but now the feeling of vulnerability is ever so present. I need to find a way to manage the fear of dying and my children being motherless. I’m alive and I have two beautiful children and a loving husband – I need to ground myself in this.
Psychologist and Patient 