Posted by Jacky on 1/4/2009, 10:41 am, in reply to "Re: scared daughter"
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I know I identified myself with cancer for a long time and that it was foremost in my mind most of the time while I was in treatment.
I did like my mind being taken off topic though, because it's so dreary, and sometimes those around me were successful. I tried to laugh every day, I tried to read every day, stuff like that. Maybe, and I am not saying this will work, if you tried a sort of transition - reading to her, or watching some tv with her, that would help her come out of the cancer place to a place where she feels more herself.
So in addition to what I said before about how caregivers have it the toughest, I know from my own family experience that nurses have it worst of all. You can't help yourselves - you have to look at those fingernails and check charts and put the knowledge and life experience you have to use in trying to prepare for catastrophe. It's just the way it is and it is very hard to just feel rather than think and analyse everything. It's very hard for you Deanna.
In my 40s my dad became very ill and wasn't expected to survive, but he did - much longer than anticipated at any rate. My mom had her hands full, and suddenly I became the information conduit, the driver, the grocery store guy, all that. I fell into a deep depression about 6 months later and it took me a while to realize that what had happened was that, much to my surprise, I became head of the family, the whole damned family including my older sisters. This is not something as the youngest I expected. Since then I have watched many friends and colleagues fall into the same position and it's a very difficult transition because we think we can and should handle it well - we are the younger, healthier ones and our parents are either sick or bereft and it's the least we can do, right?
The reality is that we need to give ourselves space for our own mourning, and one of the things we mourn is the loss of our position as the child, the caregiven. It's more complicated than we think it should be, we fight it, and it gets to us. Once I settled into it and understood myself better it did get easier. It will for you as well.
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