Highs and Lows ... WAVES of whacky emotions..

@LucyE, interesting response. I certainly don't personally have a victim mentality at all. The point I was making is that the initial shock can knock you sideways, particularly the fact that everybody else around you has a normal life, and that yours has changed so radically. The week before your diagnosis, you might very well have been buying shoes, but now??? The word picture I was trying to draw with the man analogy was that were that to happen to a man of the same age as LoriB, and that metaphorical man was not shocked, indeed stunned, by the situation, that would not be normal. Man, woman, young older, it doesn't matter, it comes as a shock to us all. I have to say, for myself, if I was thirty years younger than I was at diagnosis, yes, it would have had different implications, and I wouldn't have had the extra life experience that I had at 58, by my goodness, my body would have been younger and fitter to fight this. This is not a pissing contest as to whose situation is worse, it sucks for all of us. Some cope with soft music and Kumbaya, others do the combat boot thing...whatever works for you.