Feel free to ask me. — I know folks are reluctant to even ask whether is OK to ask.
I think we not only need to be open about mental health issues more, but general health aspect, too — not limited but especially serious ones.
Cheers
Stephan
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As a patient, just mental health issues.
But my ex-wife had to have a kidney transplant, but is now fully recovered.
I recently lost my father to Myeloma, a form of bone marrow cancer.
What do you want to know?
Dan
You’ve got my interest and support. Husband was developer and had mental illness for many years before he died. This is a subject we need to talk about more and give love.
Thank you for joining in. (I hoped you would.)
I’m here to answer whatever questions there may be about who a person (me) dealt/deals with the (now) aftermath of tumour therapy.
I have autoimmune liver disease and take immune suppressants to keep my body from destroying my liver further. Consequently I run out of energy very quickly and stress just wipes me out. I don’t usually tell people At work because I think they won’t understand but had to tell people I work with because of Covid high risk.
So tell me more. How does this effect you? How do you deal with what you have been through?
Effects where plenty, but not what I expected or know about before:
- For a while I couldn’t life one foot. The communication between the brain and the muscle wasn’t working. (Fixed by physio therapy and training)
- Lost feeling in some toes and finger tips. In the fingers in was disturbing, mainly because using a keyboard turned out to be hard. (Problem mostly fixed now, by using the finders teaching glass marbles in bowls containing beans, playing with Lego
The most irritating was the insecurity I felt after leaving the hospital after the surgeries (yes that’s a plural) when I was back home — with one a ‘panic button’ I could press.
For now the longer effect is, that I feel significantly more … calm. Many things aren’t as important anymore others are more important: Getting out for a walk, starting to go to the gym (so much so, that I massively miss it, now that they’re closed during the coronian times).
One thing I learned, is that cancer patients very often develop a very dark humour in order to deal with the illness. — I did.
I had some parts of the colon removed — but have to mention that this didn’t seem to have affected my gut feeling about things.
I am pretty sure that I am just bottling everything up inside so that I can continue to support myself and my family. But when I sit down and list to myself all of the life events that have been hitting me, it is overwhelming.
Starting a little over a year ago: I lost my husband to a sudden unexpected heart attack. I wasn’t with him; instead my youngest son was. That is just added burden to my heart.
Then my oldest son planned a lovely trip to Europe for both of us - which would have been so, so, awesome - except that COVID-19 has caused the whole thing to be cancelled… Then my mother had a stroke - 2,000 miles away from us. The whole family flew out to be with her and was able to spend one day with her. The facility then went on lockdown. I am so depressed about the possibility that she could die with only strangers surrounding her. And I know that there are hundreds and thousands of other people in the same situation. It is heartbreaking.
Luckily, I still have a job. But there is still anxiety that due to the economic fallout of the pandemic, I could lose it. So, I am trying to update my resume and keep my eyes open for other opportunities.
I think the only things keeping me going are my 2 sons who still live at home, my daughter’s upcoming wedding (I hope it still is able to happen) and my faith.
With all of that, I am so grateful that people have been posting coping mechanisms, self-care strategies, etc. I will be incorporating so much of this. Thank you all!
Such a good point. Much has been improved for mental health, but people don’t really know how to deal with you when you have a physical health problem, especially one that will not go away.
It’s making it harder for me that I don’t feel like I can tell everyone at work about it because of a bad experience I had at my first job. Now I’m at home without proper office equipment which is leading to pain.
I had an array of serious illnesses and lost most of my twenties to them. I mostly dealt with it by just waiting until it was all over. Somewhat fine as a coping mechanism, but regret it now as it caused some mental health fallout I’m still trying to deal with.
This has definitely been the best 24hrs since the lockdown though 
Takes time but sounds like you are doing a great job of getting better.
You’re right. I’m very grateful this worked out the way it did.
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