Forum Discussion
How to prioritise self care?
So self care is the mantra in survivorship right?
I need to do gym three times a week for the weight bearing exercises to stave off the bone damage of Letrozole. Haven't managed to work that into my schedule since early last December.
On the days when I'm not at the gym I have to walk because minimum of 30 mins a day exercise, preferably an hour.
I have to bust stress, of which I have an excess. So I'm starting a yoga class on Saturday morning. Can't use food and booze to stress bust anymore.
I have to sort out my head, get rid of the depression, manage the anxiety, so it's a psychologist appointment every two or three weeks. She wants me to journal. I struggle to find the time. She also wants me to spend 30 minutes a day doing something I enjoy, just for me.
I saw my dietician today about my failure to knuckle down and lose weight. My willpower is rubbish and as you know, it's like rolling a boulder up a hill trying to lose weight in menopause on an AI. Have to eat a low sat fat diet because of the Letrozole cholesterol issues. I have to cook most days of the week for a vegetarian, three meat-eating teenagers and a Type 2 diabetes octogenarian.
There's also the assorted ongoing medical appointments that seem to roll around with remarkable frequency.
This afternoon on my way home from the dietician in Town, I received a phone call from my son saying my daughter was vomiting, a lot. She was already home with extreme tiredness and what she described as stress from the overwhelming amount of schoolwork she has (Yr 10). Of course it could be just that, or glandular fever, but my mind goes straight to cancer. Lymphoma probably...
I also get an email from school about my nephew (Yr 8) He's got yet another detention after being given several warnings to rein in his classroom behaviour. The teacher is "beginning to wonder if he has impulse control issues".
My son, starting uni next week, has done nothing whatsoever about learning to drive or getting a job and has zero money. How does he think he is going to pay for his day to day uni life? He's been sitting in his room playing computer games and watching anime since November. From the beginning of January I've made him cook dinner once a week.
My niece continues to be the most difficult of them all. Almost continually rude, refuses simple requests, sulky, terrible sleep issues & much more.
So to properly deal with each one of those issues takes buckets of time and buckets of money. GP appointments, specialist child psychologists and who knows what else. About to take vomiting daughter to the doctor now.
My self care, if done properly, would take buckets of time and buckets of money.
There are no buckets here. If there's a choice I have to prioritise the kids. Any prioritising of myself is already accompanied by massive guilt.
I am really struggling to arrange my survivorship life. And that's even before I start trying to find and then hopefully get a job. How does everyone do this? How do I recover fully and lead a healthier, engaged life in survivorship, and take care of everyone else, have a satisfying relationship with my partner, a job, maintain contact with my friends, keep fit, lose weight, not be stressed and feel OKish about everything? Is it actually possible to do at all?
Yours from the House of Bad Behaviour and Vomit, K
I need to do gym three times a week for the weight bearing exercises to stave off the bone damage of Letrozole. Haven't managed to work that into my schedule since early last December.
On the days when I'm not at the gym I have to walk because minimum of 30 mins a day exercise, preferably an hour.
I have to bust stress, of which I have an excess. So I'm starting a yoga class on Saturday morning. Can't use food and booze to stress bust anymore.
I have to sort out my head, get rid of the depression, manage the anxiety, so it's a psychologist appointment every two or three weeks. She wants me to journal. I struggle to find the time. She also wants me to spend 30 minutes a day doing something I enjoy, just for me.
I saw my dietician today about my failure to knuckle down and lose weight. My willpower is rubbish and as you know, it's like rolling a boulder up a hill trying to lose weight in menopause on an AI. Have to eat a low sat fat diet because of the Letrozole cholesterol issues. I have to cook most days of the week for a vegetarian, three meat-eating teenagers and a Type 2 diabetes octogenarian.
There's also the assorted ongoing medical appointments that seem to roll around with remarkable frequency.
This afternoon on my way home from the dietician in Town, I received a phone call from my son saying my daughter was vomiting, a lot. She was already home with extreme tiredness and what she described as stress from the overwhelming amount of schoolwork she has (Yr 10). Of course it could be just that, or glandular fever, but my mind goes straight to cancer. Lymphoma probably...
I also get an email from school about my nephew (Yr 8) He's got yet another detention after being given several warnings to rein in his classroom behaviour. The teacher is "beginning to wonder if he has impulse control issues".
My son, starting uni next week, has done nothing whatsoever about learning to drive or getting a job and has zero money. How does he think he is going to pay for his day to day uni life? He's been sitting in his room playing computer games and watching anime since November. From the beginning of January I've made him cook dinner once a week.
My niece continues to be the most difficult of them all. Almost continually rude, refuses simple requests, sulky, terrible sleep issues & much more.
So to properly deal with each one of those issues takes buckets of time and buckets of money. GP appointments, specialist child psychologists and who knows what else. About to take vomiting daughter to the doctor now.
My self care, if done properly, would take buckets of time and buckets of money.
There are no buckets here. If there's a choice I have to prioritise the kids. Any prioritising of myself is already accompanied by massive guilt.
I am really struggling to arrange my survivorship life. And that's even before I start trying to find and then hopefully get a job. How does everyone do this? How do I recover fully and lead a healthier, engaged life in survivorship, and take care of everyone else, have a satisfying relationship with my partner, a job, maintain contact with my friends, keep fit, lose weight, not be stressed and feel OKish about everything? Is it actually possible to do at all?
Yours from the House of Bad Behaviour and Vomit, K
136 Replies
- @kmakm
I think I'm up to 13 things on my list, Kate, mainly just freshening up a late 1970s house to modernise it in a subtle way without spending a fortune. Painting inside and out and new carpet neither of which has been done for over 10 and 25 years are the first things on the hit list. So when Sarah and Connor move out the walls in their bedroom walls will become paint swatches! But someone else will do the work otherwise my body will really crack the shits with me. Gardening is enough already. Did the whipper snipping last night, we're in Tawonga South, and this morning it felt like I'd had a run in with a truck! Then i start thinking about all that is to be done at Sarah's gardening wise cos they'll need help...ah well that's what ice packs, gym work outs and osteos are for! At least they are 5 min drive away. Zoe is lucky, she has an apartment and the gardening is done for them. Just as well, as she is a 40 min drive, an hour if the traffic is bad. It was rather funny, Zoe bought her apartment within a week of finding it on the net, literally round the corner from where she was renting. Sarah was a bit miffed cos they'd been looking for months! Hehehe...Zoe tends to have the luck. Xx - @Artferret Thank you Cath. I do get so lonely for my husband. He is away in Sydney every week for three or four days, and even in Melbourne he works really long hours. As previously discussed, I put my foot down about having a day out together every month. This was to sate my desire to be out and about, travelling, but it's turned out that it's the spending of time together that I'm really enjoying.
During the week I cracked the sads and said we had to prioritise spending time together a bit more. So we're going to try to pop out for a drink together every now and then, be it a coffee or a mocktail.
The week after next is our 20th wedding anniversary. The original plan was to go to a tropical island somewhere for a week or ten days. We haven't had a holiday alone together since our honeymoon, and he likes a beach holiday (way more than I do) so I was going back to work to save up for Fiji or Thailand or something like that. Well BC well and truly scuppered that plan, so it's dinner at a nice restaurant overlooking a Port Phillip Bay beach instead!
I'll try to smile tonight before I go to sleep. It's become such a torturous time of day for me. I'll give anything a go!
Thank you sweets for all your support. Have you any plans for your empty nest? K xox - @"Kiwi Angel" Thanks Steph. I don't know if it's all the right things! I'm feeling so crap at survivorship, new normal and life in general that it's hard to credit. I 'just' need to string a few good things together, get a good routine and rhythm going, to feel like I've got a bit of a handle on a bit of my life. Rather than careening from one crisis to the next. Control! Just a bit of control... or the illusion of it!
- @Blossom1961 Always Didi!
- Big hugs @kmakm sounds like u are doing all the right things. U definitely need to look after yourself xoxooxox
- Hey K @kmakm Do you need someone to help you on the picket line? Love Didi
- @Zoffiel That made me chuckle.
I am holding the strike in my back pocket. It is not beyond me to do it. - I had a chuckle today reading an opinion piece about parenting in the Herald Sun. ( trashy, I know, but I can't help myself) The author suggested you don't take the electronic device, you just take the charger so they have to watch the toy slowly die. It wouldn't work, of course--I seriously doubt most deprivation exercises do-- but the idea appealed to my warped sense of humour.
- @AllyJay Thank you Ally. I have never been any kind of parental pushover. I have cancelled sleepovers and withstood room destroying tantrums as a result (niece). She broke things that have not been replaced and has not tried it since. My children were voted best behaved in my local cafe when they were little, in an unofficial staff poll! It's because when they were even younger I warned them that if the bad behaviour continued, we'd leave. It did and we left. They were shocked and never misbehaved in a cafe again. No rubbery no's here!
The problem with my niece and nephew is we didn't raise them from birth, so our parenting style is completely foreign to them. They are kicking at the traces. And after two years of this, during which I had BC, and now have to find time for self care, I am exhausted with the fight and at my wits' end. I always give warnings. There's a sliding scale of punishment - loss of pocket money, no computer/tv, cancellation of events and so on, good behaviour is always praised, we try to laugh as much as possible, I hug them often, tell them I love them. It's just insanely hard.
My sister had so much mental illness as well as physical. She lived with my parents as she could not live on her own. My father resented her presence and then the childrens'. His retirement was 'ruined'. He loved them all dearly but my sister and he butted heads, and neither of them are/were easy to live with. Especially my sister. It was always walking on eggshells at the best of times. So as a result my mother over compensated and spoilt the children. Still does. She did everything for them. Breakfast in bed every day, constant checking that everything little thing was organised for them so they never had a chance to learn the consequences of forgetting or responsibility, constant buying them things, no chores. She was trying to work through her own grief of losing her child through them. She still does.
Bloody f******g breast cancer has screwed with my life, our lives, in so many ways. I hate it so f******g much. - Kate, it sounds like you need a little bit of fun in your life right now, to get away from the mundane things that never go away. How long is it since you've been on a 'date' with your hubby? Just something simple, enough to give you that breathing space, even if it is just a walk, a movie, somewhere with lunch afterwards.
Plus don't start with 3 changes, start with one...sleep...i find if i get that one under control, the rest will follow because that fuzzy wuzzy brain will be gone and you will feel better in yourself and more able to tackle the next change. My sleep was crap till about 2 weeks ago when i gave my brain a severe talking to. Nothing much had caused it just a series of little things, 2 of them being our daughters purchasing their first homes just before Christmas and the little worries that come with it, helping them clean, set up, helping with purchases, answering endless questions, watching them stress over things whilst telling myself to stop stressing. So we shall be empty nesters at the end of this week, exciting but sad at the same time.
Don't ever feel guilty, Kate, not when you are doing so much for your family. And before you go to sleep tonight think of something that makes you smile. Love Cath xx
