View Full Version : shock after operation
Hi I havent posted on this site for ages. I was suffering very badly from menopausal symptoms last year which were giving me terrible anxiety, but I realised that this site was not really for me at the time.
In February this year, out if the blue ,I was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus. Although it was the very lowest stage and grade,I had to have a full hysterectomy within 3 weeks of the diagnosis
During the time leading up to the op and even when I was in hospital I coped really well. After I came out I was so glad it was all over i was quite relaxed and my joy was overwhelming when I had a call from the surgeon to say that it had been caught so early that I didnt need any further treatment-such as radiotherapy.
Almost from the moment that I had the news I went to pieces. I have always had a phobia about cancer and I just couldnt cope with the fact that I had had it, even though I had been told it was gone.I started looking on the internet and found lots of scary stuff about the fact that this cancer can reoccur occasionally and looking up all the scary statistics. I keep remembering all the horrible moments-like when I was given the diagnosis and the MRI scan. I cant think about anything else but the fact that I had cancer and that I am terrified of the future.
I had spent years overcoming every anxiety in the book, but I dont know how to cope with this one as it is real and not imagined.
Everyone else in my life is overjoyed that I have been cured-but all I can see is years of fear stretching ahead of me! I dont know how to cope with this one!
You did so well to hold yourself together while you were ill, that it's not surprising you're letting go now, and letting out all your fears.
It sounds like you've fought really hard to overcome anxieties in the past, and you feel like this is something different because it has been so real for you. I wondered if there was anyone attached to your hospital team that you could talk to? Your worries are completely valid and maybe sharing them with someone who understands that may help you to deal with them?
Take care of yourself,
A x
I am glad you understand where I am coming from. There was absolutely no offer of any kind of emotional help at any time at the hospital. I was quite surprised actually.
I am thinking about seeing a cognitive therapist, because although I have dealt with every fear and know how to do it ,I think in order to cope with this one I need to change my patterns of thinking totally.
Just to update-When I had my follow up appointment recently the surgeon told me that I could consider myself cured. He says he has not seen anyone who had the same as myself to have a recurrance. So again that is good news.
I am not now so concerned with that, but I am finding it hard to come to terms with my own vulnerability. I never thought I would get a serious illness and blocked out the thought of death as I could never deal with it. This whole experience has brought me up sharply!
I dont know how to make myself comfortable with the thought of dying and particularly the thought of having another illness.
I dont understand how most people go along not thinking about it all the time. Obviously on this site there are others who do. Anyone got any strategies for dealing with it please?
Firstly I am glad to hear you are through this scary experience and can now put it behind you. Quite obviously the way you coped at the time was marvellous but it has caught up with you now and left you feeling all at sea.
You know its a funny thing the way our culture views death and dying because in so many other cultures death is only ever seen as a new beginning on our journey through eternity.
Would it help you at all to look at it from this perspective. I'm not sure if Deepak Chopra writes about this or not - perhaps you could ask Mirry by PM if the books she is reading on mindful living have any references to this.
Meanwhile hun try to only live in the day you are in and fill it with positive images - quite a few of us on here like affirmation cards, have a look on www.holisticshop.co.uk and see if any shout out at you. I find when I am struggling I pick one and make that my mantra for the day. Have a look a Louise Hay's ones.:)
Piglet xx
"Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?" said Piglet.
"Supposing it didn't," said Pooh after careful thought.
Thank you. Before I had cancer I was always reading the sort of books on that site. I used to lap them up. I read all the "Conversations with God" books and after my op I read "the Power of Now".
I used to take great comfort from them when illness and death were just far away things that freaked me out sometimes in my dark imaginings.
Unfortunately they dont seem to work any more. I have had a huge dose of reality and there is no escape from that.
Any belief I had in anything has gone and I am all at sea.
I am having a really bad day but I wont give up! I need a different strategy to deal with this. Treating it like agoraphobia or similar just isnt working.
Perhaps this is a temporary thing. Other people have far worse illnesses to contend with and still manage to enjoy their life.
I am hoping that time will help. Old people seem to accept quite happily that they could "go" at any time. I wish I new their secret
Hun I really think this is a temporary phase you are going through in response to what you have been through - which is totally natural and understandable.
Is there any mileage in material to do with PTSD - you do need time to adjust and aclimatise to what you have been through and perhaps it has to be worked through painful as that is.
Have you been back to your GP and told them how you are feeling - is counselling an option.
All the best and wishing I could help more.
Piglet x
Thank you Piglet-its lovely to know you care. Do you think that is what I have-PTSD? I am not sure. I have always had such terrible anxiety in the past and have dealt with it by facing up to the problem and reasoning it through. I was always terrified of cancer so i told myself I would never get it. It was stupid of me really, but if I hadn't got cancer then it was a strategy that would have continued to work for me.
I have been to my doctor. She has referred me for counselling but when the counsellor called I could tell by what she was saying that she wouldnt be right for me. She kept on about life skill courses and relaxation techniques. I felt more anxious after talking to her than i did before. I dont need any of that stuff. I have dealt with all unrealistic anxieties in the past and I know all about relaxation techniques.
I think the fear I now have is quite reasonable, given the circumstances.
I am perfectly capable of coping in all situations. I just feel awful.I get thoughts going round and round. It builds to a crescendo sometimes and I feel very trapped. The coping methods I used with all my other fears just dont work. I put on my smart clothes, makeup and brave face and carry on as though I'm fine. Only a couple of people know how I really feel.
Somehow I have to change my thought patterns, because I always thought that if I got cancer I wouldnt cope. I am still thinking that, even though on one level I am coping. I would just like to feel at peace within myself again-you know -that feeling of comfort in your tummy. I just don't know how to get there
Sorry I am going on a bit but getting it all down helps
Janet c
Gretchen-Thank you so much for your post. It is the first time that anyone has said anything to hit the right note with me!
I taught myself so well how to deal with panic and anxieties in the past.
I know I have been through a huge experience but even so- I am having a really bad time now.
I did have my ovaries removed as I am 54. Apparently they always remove them as well, during or after menopause. There was no sign of disease. I just had grade one stage one of the uterus.
Sometimes I will not even be thinking anxious thoughts then I will be aware of a huge knot in my stomach. Sometimes following on from that my heart really pounds and then I have a full on hot fush with that crawling feeling that you mention.
Unfortunately I am not permitted any form of HRT or even natural plant oestrogens so Im just gonna have to suffer.
I am surrounded by people who do not worry about getting cancer or dying for that matter.My husband just cant get his head around it. His attitude is why worry about things you cant do anything about?
I must admit I was thinking last night that I have been trying to solve my fear by trying to fight it, the way I would fight a phobia. Suddenly something clicked and I just sort of realised, that as horrible as it all is I just have to accept it -the way I accept I have blue eyes. There is nothing to fight!
I like the fact that you mention that my body's immune system must be good if I only had grade one.
I am so afraid that I am now prone to cancer and that felt reassuring. I am actually normally very fit and active. I did not fit the normal profile for this disease at all.
Your whole post was so interesting that I have printed it off. Thank you for taking the time to write it!
Janet c
Hi Janet -
I would have responded to your very nice post but I got cold feet about posting for awhile for various reasons, quit, but I came back. It doesn't work to live in fear and keep hiding huh?
It was such a lift to me that only sharing information I already knew, helped you. I've gotten such help here it's boggling, really.
I wanted to share two other things with you too that now I'm not sure if I did since I erased all of my posts! Darn me.
I went to nursing school about 30 years ago, first learned this theory then but it's still current and is now being recognized as a viable and important component of anyone's recovery when they've lost any body part from any reason, surgery included. The theory is people go thru a very low to high feelings of grieving even when an organ that can't be seen is removed. Simple as that. Self image and sometimes purpose in life changes and has to be reinvented. I worked in maternal health for a long time but gynecology was physically close by and often worked there too, with women who had hysterectomies. Even women who were well passed child bearing age, who had hysterectomies had some level of depression. We'd have a psychiatric social worker assess all of our mastectomy or hysterectomy patients to see what their level of anxiety, depression, grieving they had from loss of previous self perception. Loss of ability to bear children even if you have no plans or can not bare children any longer. When I was in child baring years I couldn't get pregnant for 9 years. Went to fertility specialists, the whole route - nothing. I gave up and then started squirting children out at nearly one a year for (gulp) 7 years. My husband had a vasectomy, I had another baby. He had a revised vasectomy, I had two more children. I love all my children but the truth is we could only afford so many plus we have some inheritable health problems and felt it was irresponsible to continue breeding like rabbits, which was a phrase used towards me so often I started getting a little angry about it. BUT when I had a total hysterectomy long after my last child was born, deeply in menapause, would have fainted if I would have gotten pregnant then. It made no difference. I felt a lot of grieving I could no longer have children. And I was told it was a normal feeling. Often they said these feelings of grieving aren't recognized for what they are either because it's nonsensical for those of us who don't want to get pregnant and are in menapause. Maybe that doesn't apply to you, but if it does, I wanted to share that. Then again I might have already shared it.
The reason why I told you that I was glad your body had such protective immunities apparently is this, and I want you to check out my information because this is not an area I'm expert in. I attended ONE seminar that gave an overview, but it was extremely relieving to me. I did check out for me with my doctor what was shared at this seminar and he agreed. There, that's all the expertise I have. Not the gospel IOW. A few cancer cells are always in our bodies. Some pathologists call these "rogue cells" or cells that shouldn't be there. Troublemaker cells. But there are many other rogue cells too. Virus's, bacteria, fluid filled cysts, solid benign tumors, excessive internal scar growth called adhesions, a cell that should be there but wasn't formed correctly, the list is endless and we all have them. The example used in this seminar was do you always get the cold your child has? The answer is of course, no. The pathologist giving the seminar said each cold is a virus, and each time we get a cold we form an immunity to that virus. But virus cells have an excellent ability to mutate so there are infinity cold viral cells, we can never develop an immunity to all. Going with that he said it's nearly impossible not to have viral cold cells enter your bodies because the symptoms of a cold are designed by nature to be broadcasted to others by sneezing and coughing. We don't have immunity but we don't always get the cold eit
Hi Meggy-thanks again for your very informative post! How lovely to have had so many children. You are blessed! I, myself have 3 daughters now all grown and I feel very blessed also!
I have been advised that my cancer was of the endometrium. It was simply a build up of the lining caused by a hormone inbalance over a long period of time(too much oestrogen in relation to progesterone). This explains to me why i had such a terrible menopause and why HRT made me feel worse!
The doctor told me it was very slow growing and I probably had it for about 18 months before any symptoms started. As it was it was still at an early stage when I had the op.
He told me there could still be a few rogue cells about but as long as I did not take HRT they would not grow as they are oestrogen based.
Dont worry-I am very informed about it all!
Why did you have cold feet about posting again?
I would be interested to hear about you. You sound like such a lovely lady!:)
Thank you Janet. It seemed like you have this straight in your head (lucky ducky :)) and I'm not an expert at all in either of those things I mentioned but I thought you might find those theories interesting.
Why did I leave? It's beause in large part why I came here. This is a very small nutshell. Call it another overview or maybe an oversimplification from Meggy but you'll get the general gist I"m sure. The more I posted about it too? The more the real aspects about this thing that happened to me, I finally, and I mean finally, started being able to openly talked about it to anyone but my therapist, and that was here. I did try a different forum first and got badly hurt on it when they starred out the word Rape on my posts. It's not a filthy word, it's a noun or can be used as a verb for a violent act against another. I nicely tried to educate the moderator on that, there were no children there either, but she said in writing I should have read the rules, they would not allow - whatever she said I read it thru torrential tears. I think it was "dirty" words. I wrote back and asked what if I slip and say I breast fed my children will "breast" be starred out? Of course I got no answer. I did get a tremendnous amount of info and support from a health forum for a health problem I have severely too, uncontrolled epilepsy. My psychiatrist suggested I try a forum then, I was stalling out, getting worse, modalities in tx were failing for me. I hadn't thought of it, was excited until that happened. But it was so different here. The people I'm still marveling about. Noncensoring, friendly, informed. How could there be such differences between forums? But that kind of thing,censorship, if it's happened to you, as it just did to me, can shut a person down very quickly, create incredible insecurities.
So, my root problem, that's my diagnosis BTW, is I was raped, but the people who surround me will do almost anything to avoid "The Incident". Rape is not conc**ual s*x, it's pure violence. It should not embarass people but believe me it does, and say the initials PTSD in a rape support group and the room echoes it's so quiet. This is not an enlightened society when it comes to (horrors) having your life nearly taken by being raped as badly as was I. The point that there is little support for many of us if we mention "the word" or anything connected to it and that,over 3 years, has made this pain I've had turn into a chancre sore. Mary Rose was pointing out to me in one of my posts how I'm being trained by people around me not to grieve, feel emotional pain or sadness. I thought for over a day and I can't remember one single time I've grieved. So I decided, I'm going to grieve. I don't know HOW! I even started a thread I now think sounds ridiculous asking people to tell me, how do you grieve.One of the many 10 deadly sins when I was growing up was "feeling sorry for yourselff". Maybe I got it from that. I'm still not sure. But now I have this feeling, a need, that feels like I want to grieve but it still doesn't happen. I almost did last night and felt like I might start howling at the moon it got so intense so I switched it off. I've gotten very good with my switches. Others do with their triggers? I do with my switch off's. It's true too, so true I don't know how I didn't realize it. But my "friends" and relatives? Hate tto see my tears, me getting even close to the topic, a mere whiff, if I seem sad I get pummeled with "why's" and if I say because of what happened to me, they all clear out of the room. Many ways to avoid it but I can't, I have to live with it and it's been mostly alone. I think that is self serving of them and to be honest I know I'd never treat them that way, and have never in the past, which angers me more. They weren't raped, it was me. If I can get thru that can't they just hear the word, know I need more support than a 2 minute monologue? As a result I think all my hurt, grief, sad emotions I turn into anger but worse, I have rag
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