Having trouble just coping

Crankiness is sometimes the only way to cope but as someone who is a pretty happy person most of the time, I sympathise with your feelings of radical change and hating it. But hard as it is to do, you are the person who can reclaim your happiness. You have been diagnosed early enough to make a real difference. You have made decisions about treatment, good for you. So the next step is to realise that this is not your life, it is just a bit of your life and you may look back on it in time as a very small part of your life. It's not a particularly good part, and if you have been in the habit of being the decision maker, there will be times when that role has to be renegotiated (or just dropped for a while). Your husband would really be useless if you weren't there at all, so now is a chance for him to step up. Give him a chance, it won't be perfect but then few things are and definitely not bc. Relaxation (hard with three small ones I know), occupying your mind with other things, or getting some counseling (talking to a stranger can be hugely liberating!) can all help rebuild your positive sense of yourself.

Fear can build on fear - particularly if you keep it all inside. So talk here, there are lots who will totally understand. You are not a wreck, just very fearful of being one. We all know that feeling well. But many of us didn't become wrecks and we have recovered our lives, our sense of fun (yes, it can happen!) and optimism. Deep breaths, keep calm, you too can do this.

Ah, Shorelle, there are many reasons we don't want this disease. Mine came back in my armpit (Cancer in the armpit? Really? WTF?)

I can't dwell on it as far as worrying about it coming back. I used to say that what doesn't kill you makes you stranger, now I think it just hangs around in the background and has another go later. There it is again, the black humour and cynical outlook that drives some of us.

As far as fair is concerned, meh. Little kids getting cancer is not fair. Innocent people getting slaughtered in pointless wars isn't fair. People dying of preventable diseases because they are too poor to afford basic medicine, that is really not fair. A recurrent cancer in a middle aged woman who has had the benefit of a wild and wide life in one of the most privileged countries in the world. No, probably not 'fair', but I've had a pretty good run. We will see what happens, but I can assure you, if I didn't think my experience would be somehow helpful to others, I probably wouldn't discuss my disease very often.

You can move on. Things are a new normal, but you can move on. Marg xx

Hey  @shorelle  I've just, today, had my portacath removed after having to go through the whole bloody process again. I had a double mastectomy with reconstructions at the end of 2006 and had a recurrence, with all the associated drama, last year.

You know, it does get better. I'm not suggesting that it all just goes away, but that physical feeling of fear that follows you around does lose a bit of energy and lags behind a bit. It catches up every once in a while, but if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time you can start to feel you are outpacing it 

I've got no evidence apart from experience to support this, but I think sometimes BC is harder for people who have previously had a sunny disposition. Perhaps those of us who are crankier and generally less cheerful are used to being pissed off and feeling like shit. I don't know.

Good luck with your upcoming surgery. I firmly believe that the process of making those sorts of decisions is far and away the toughest part of BC treatment. If you have been through that, you have done the worst bit. It is bloody exhausting, but you are getting there. Keep going. Marg XXX