Dealing with end of life as I knew it. Massive changes in my life.

[Doors24]

Hello,

The last seven months have been nothing but massive upheaval and changes. I already suffered from anxiety and depression. These changes have made everything worse and I feel so isolated.

 I went through and currently am still experiencing a medical trauma starting seven months ago. But life still went on whilst I was having to deal with that.

 I lost my amazing dog due to illness and old age whilst I was having treatment and there was nothing I could physically, mentally or emotionally do for her. I was too unwell to help her. She wasn’t alone. As a family dog. But 15 years and she is just gone and the house is so quiet. She was quite a large dog,so her presence is so noticeably absent in just space alone. And that was only two weeks ago.

Then just two weeks later, my family member who has lived with me down my end of the house, moved out. We have spent our childhood together and almost 15 years of our adult lives co-habitating in this space together. Indirectly, we became part of each other’s daily routine by just sounds alone. Even if we didn’t speak directly to each other, we could hear each other living our lives in our rooms. I’d hear their alarms go off in the morning. I could hear them working from home during the day on phone calls and walking up and down the hallway to get coffees or something to eat. At night I could hear them laughing at the tv, taking a shower in the bathroom or even using the toilet spray in the toilet. (The walls are thin in this house). I have become so used to those daily sounds being in my life. I could go to sleep at night comforted by the sounds coming out of the room next door. I felt and have always felt safe living with this sibling being in the next room. And in the space of just 16 hours on the one day, they packed up all their belongings and emptied that room. That morning they lived here. By that night they no longer live here. And they aren’t coming back to live here again. They have called their new place their home verbally.

And whilst I am genuinely happy for that sibling to have finally found their own space and independence. It is just another loss too quickly after the last. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to see all these spaces empty or once belong to someone else, but now know that they don’t. It is so incredibly sad and overwhelming and I can’t process it fast enough and my depression is getting worse.

I feel so isolated. I can’t talk about anything I am feeling with the family members left in this house. I have tried and tried. They are emotionally unavailable and are legitimately unable to have real connection type of conversations. The person I was connected to the most in this house,is the one who moved out.

 I just don’t know what to do. I have to walk past their empty door everytime I leave my own room. The silence is so prominent. The grief is so raw. I dream about my dog at night. My house used to be full of life and happiness and now it is full of unhappy people and no connection to one another. We can’t have a discussion together. We are all feeling like there is a dark shadow over our house and waiting for the next thing to happen. I am all alone. Being unwell, I can’t leave this space either. 

 I just need someone to talk to or be heard or have a human connection with. I am not dealing with this well. Any changes are hard for me to process and just this year alone, there has been too many massive changes in short succession.

Thank you for taking the time to read this or respond.

Doors 24

[Doors24]

Dear Indigo22,

Please take care of yourself first. That is the most important thing. Thank you for letting me know. I hope you are able to work out everything you need too.

I am more then happy to talk to other people too on this thread. Or if not, then I might be able to offer a friendly ear to others in their posts.

Doors24

[indigo22]

Hi Doors24,

A couple of weeks has turned into a lot longer due to some unwelcome news I received recently. I thought I was getting on top of things when I began to feel a pain in my side of unknown origin. The doctor ordered a CT to see what might be causing is. As it turns out I am anything but 10 years cancer free, I have stage 4 cancer with metastasis to the liver (the cause of the pain) and in both lungs.

When I had cancer 10 years ago, they did an initial CT and after the operations followed up with regular ultra sounds of my lymph nodes but never did a follow up CT to make sure it had not spread. I suspect this is the same cancer that had already begun to migrate but didn't show up on the first CT yet, now it has gone unmonitored all these years. They kept talking about their Gold standard of care with my particular cancer, and were not happy that I refused to have my lymph nodes removed. Perhaps it has never occurred to them that there are other avenues for cancer to spread and that they should be more vigilant with follow up tests. I am peeved about the lack of follow up but I can't change that now.

I have decided on a natural medicine approach and have spent the last few weeks getting further tests and working out a protocol with my naturopath. I have now started the protocol and will have a follow up CT in four months to check the progress, I hope to have better news then.

It has been knocking me about a bit, referred pain from the liver and needing to sleep more hours just to get through the day, but that will improve with time. I will be returning to the forums soon, just needed time to adjust which I know you would understand from experience.

I hope your doctors are doing all the correct follow up tests for you, if you ever feel they aren't, make sure you speak up for yourself. If I had known then, what I know now, I would have requested the follow up CT, but it never occurred to me that it was needed. I trusted that they knew what they were doing.

I hope these last few weeks have given you some improvement in your energy and brain fog.

You have been in my thoughts,

indigo 💜

[Doors24]

Dear Indigo22,

Something has been telling me to return to the forums, but I have been quite busy myself. I apologize for the late reply today. I am very sorry to hear your news and understand that you need all the time it takes to process and do what you need to on a daily basis. I am grateful for your advice and to hear you have some steps going forward. I also understand and now believe in advocating for myself. I always trusted and believed everything I was told, because why wouldn't I believe professionals? But now, my experience tells me I need to lead everything myself, even if it makes me feel uncomfortable to possibly make a professional snappy at me. Especially if I have to be under their care.

Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts. That is very kind when you must be a bit overwhelmed. I sincerely hope you have some good people around you to support you. And that you check out any resources that maybe provided to you, for you to link into. I know there are forums for cancer that were good to express myself.

Mostly, I hope you are finding ways to be good to yourself every day and acknowledge at least a few things you are achieving, even through this tough time. Even the tiny tasks are a win. And please know, that it is more than okay for you to just focus on yourself and not everyone else. They can look after themselves. You look after yourself first.

I am doing better and coping the best that I can. One step at a time is all I can ask for. Everyday as it comes. And sometimes, that is good enough.

These posts are too short,but.

I am around, so please reach out again if you need to or are ready.

Take care of yourself,

Doors24