My husband’s kidney biopsy has come back and it was negative. I am not sure why it took for me to see the report for me to believe it was true. The surgeon told me he was sure it was not cancer, our primary told me it was not cancer but until I saw the pathology saying no cancer I still thought there was a chance it was cancer.
I do not know if this fear in my head will ever go away but the reality is that this fear is so all consuming and overwhelming. I find myself not sleeping until I am too exhausted and just crash. When I was going through all my treatments I had a great deal of stress and the doctor gave me anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping pills and anti-depressants. I took them and I slept but they did not stop all the worrying and stress. I weaned myself off when I hit my five year mark of being cancer free. Yet while I was waiting for my husband’s pathology report I find myself wishing I was still on them.
Now all the medications took a long time to get out of my system and I will not get back on them but sitting and waiting for test results I was wishing I had them again.
There is a great deal of stress involved in cancer treatments and a lot of patients think they are handling it just fine. The reality is they are not noticing their snappiness, mood swings, difficulty sleeping or lack of appetite. If they are noticing it they often think it is a side effect of the treatments or the disease itself but in reality it is part of the stress that accompanies the diagnosis. We have a family member currently going through treatment and hear about his “side effects” when the reality is the things they are mentioning are stress related. When we mentioned to the person they should consider asking for medications that could help they took a hard stand and denied that they are having issues with stress.
Why is it so hard for people to ask help or admit they need it?
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