What wld you like health professionals to understand re emotional/ psychological fallout from BC?

@AllyJay I know it happened but it's just unimaginable to me how you have got through it - that treatment was an abomination.  Small words but I hope you know...

All good thoughts here.  I have been lucky enough to have an onc who recognises the emotional and sexual well-being issues but it still doesn't help much.  There are psychs attached to the clinic but when I tried to access the service, I could not get an appointment.  I was falling apart when I eventually got into a psych through the Country Fire Service family mental health programme.

I hate the "new normal".  There's nothing normal about it.  I'm floundering most of the time, I'm so bloody tired, I have no memory, I'm clinically depressed, my body doesn't work properly anymore, I feel as if I have woken up having aged about 20 years overnight, I wonder if I'm going to see my kids grow up and become whoever they're going to be, I feel disconnected from my body and often from my inner self, I'm a cranky bitch with a short fuse, I feel like running away but suspect I might follow me.

@Zoffiel - Even Queen Victoria had Post Natal Depression & as it wasn't 'recognised/treated' - she went from a loving caring mother to a bit of an emotional wreck with no real connection with her children from then on - much to their detriment!    :(     I bet there are still many who are not diagnosed  & treated for it, even now.   :(

 

Thanks friends for your support. The point I was trying to come to was that so long as you have one patient complaining to their doctor about side effects, sleeplessness, sexual difficulties and so on, there seems to be the common thread that either they are imagining it altogether, or perhaps they have a teensy weensy touch of this or that, but the literature doesn't support the patient's statements that this is a common and widespread problem. When pressed about the patient's statement, and it comes to light that they are members of groups such as ours, (but not exclusively) it seems that dismissive statements are made. such as it being apocryphal or exaggerated symptoms put forward to support groups as a sort of one uppance of what a dreadful time we're having. Of course "Oh did you get that off of Facebook or Dr Google is just as common a put down. As in my reference to my past, as long as people were isolated from one another, they couldn't share common problems. They weren't aware that they weren't the only person suffering thus. As soon as people came together, these things came into focus as being far from isolated, or highly unusual, and probably stemmed from problems north of the eyebrows. In today's world of the internet, the medical profession can't still hold their previously godlike status and hide behind their white coats, whilst paternalistically patting wan little hands. Patients are becoming more empowered and if certain personages feel threatened, they belittle the person so doing as being keyboard doctors who really should take up tatting or somesuch, and leave the medical stuff and decisions to those with all that alphabet soup printed after the names stated on the gilded degrees hanging on the walls. Rant (sort of ) over.

@Zoffiel I had a similar experience with menopause; "Don't start imagining that you have all the behavioural changes that some people have". 
I was stunned when the rads onc registrar said some BC patients begin to worry that they have what someone else in the same ward has. That makes absolutely no sense. Each set of "results" is individual. 
When I have more energy, I'll make a list of my wishes for health professionals. But in the meantime, my classic remains the BC nurse who told me the morning after my mastectomy that I had "catastrophised" everything because I had queried being given the wrong information about scan results (twice). 

@AllyJay xxx You've had more than your fair share of being on the receiving end of brutality and insensitivity. 

No worries @Flaneuse will pm the mods.

@Romla That would be great if you could do that. It will make it easier for whoever eventually does some serious advocacy work on this issue to pull together what people have said.

Thanks @Flaneuse for organising a new thread .If you haven’t already organised the mods to move p25-27 from the Early day’s on Letrozole  thread to this thread am happy to do it - there was some very good thoughts on there worth keeping together.

@AllyJay Heartbreaking. Superb response. Big hug my friend.  <3