The Hermit Club
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Mags - thank you - do you mind if I post it on my Facebook page please? People really need to know the reality, makes me sooo mad.......you are VERY brave posting this..........I am waging a campaign every time I see the prettified versión of BC
I ended up hitting a bottle of red wine last night as was so down, tearful all day............
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Oh, Mags, it's so true that people so desperately want it to all work out and be pretty in the end. When I was trying to decide whether or not to have a mastectomy one of my brothers said something like, "Oh, just go for it! Think of all the women in the world who get implants. It's so common now, I'm sure it'll be fine." And I agreed with him because what did I know???
I posted a lengthy Caring Bridge rant about how I feel ruined. It was one year from the day I was diagnosed...
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I wonder where the whole October is breast cancer awareness month came from? Was that from the Susan G. Koman foundation? I never heard of it until around the early 1990s and remember being on a business trip and spent the weekend visiting friends in TX and someone started hounding me to do the Koman walk with them.
Loosing a breast (or both) is far more difficult than anyone can ever imagine. I cannot imagine someone saying "go for it" like you are doing something cool like taking a once in a lifetime trip, buying your dream car, etc. That is when you say go for it. That should go on the stupid comments thread!
Hugs to the sisters here having a tough time through this month.
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Lily, you have my permission to share the heck out of that thing! This is what I used for my Facebook profile pic all month:
Bu it was th #nobras day that really pushed me over the edge. I commented, this is why I wear #nobra, today! or tomorrow...
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Mags- the nobra thing this year so one of the worst things I have seen around pinktober. People who try to profit off this disease with their marketing ploys or even worse, by sexualizing a disease by suggesting women go braless piss me off to no end.
May the rest of October go quickly for us all.
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Mags, who are you on facebook? Please friend me? I want to comment on your post! Thank you for having the courage to do this!
Shirley
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You are one brave woman Mags------
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You are all very brave women here. You are my heros.
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I am just feeling overwhelmed with how much I have lost in last few years, since cáncer arrived in my life...........including my home and relationship, financial security, a job, and body confidence..........teres lots more but i posted on another thread about it all so dont want to repeat this post........I feel like I have failed as a person with cáncer as I am not forging on, being "fine" as so many "survivors" are......I even hate the Word survivors, nearly all the language of cáncer separates us off from the world and from other illnesses............
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Hate survivor also, I am not
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I have never been one to let society or anyone else define me by putting me in a category or "bucket" they are comfortable with. To me, calling someone a "cancer survivor" is another bucket that has been created, to put us separate from others, as Lilly has said. I have had enough bad things happen for me in this lifetime to know labels come quickly by others based on how they perceive you have dealt with things in life (or perhaps not, in their opinion). I have yet to hear anyone I know that has had or is living with cancer describe themselves as a survivor either.
I just wanted to say I think all the sisters here, including those who are newly diagnosed, those struggling through treatment, living with cancer, or side effects, or holding their breath through every follow up, test, scan, are my every day heros. Each and every one of you is brave and strong, even if you don't think you are. We all know the reality of this disease that we go through, and what we live with.
Please don't let other people define how you feel about yourselves with their labels and buckets. This is not about them, it never was.
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I agree!
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Good morning ladies- thank you for your kind feedback. And it is nice to see old friend popping in here on this thread like my friends Teka and Footprints.
Teka- those owls are cute. Your fall decorations or just a photo from somewhere?
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hey gals. I'm back at last.
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How ARE you mommyof2?
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Been down with a bad cold the last couple of weeks.
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Mommy- sorry to hear about your cold. Hope you are feeling better.
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getting better still not totally well
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Good morning Teka- glad you to hear you are doing your civic duty!
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I was up in Northern NM late last week and into the weekend with a friend visiting from the east coast. I took some of these foliage shots with my phone camera. We get fall here, but it is different than other places. Mostly gold colors based on our beautiful cottonwoods trees along the river areas. Enjoy!
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Beautiful Teka!
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Jazzy, we have a cottonwood outside our dining room window, it's not turned yet. It's beautiful, but horrible for my allergies and cleanup in May. Cotton all over the place. Oklahoma has tons of them. We also have Bradford (non-bearing) pears in abundance, when they all bloom at the same time in spring, it's like a bridal procession along the streets. Right now they are shading to bronze. Oklahoma has a native oak called a blackjack. We had lots of them at our old house where we had an acre. They are unusual in that they turn color in the fall but do not lose their leaves. The leaves hang on the tree, a kind of dry, dusty brown, until the new growth in the spring pushes them off. They top off at around 30', and at around 30-40 years old they become very susceptible to carpenter ants, which hollow them out. Then they fall over. When we bought the house, we went over in the morning before closing for a walk through. When we came back after closing, a blackjack had fallen down across the front walkway. Maybe it was a sign. But it was the first of many in the 8 years we lived there.0
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lol
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Teka- I was out and about today and there are Xmas things everywhere! That being said, no decoration in this house so far! I will keep my autumny things up through Thanksgiving.
I ended up getting rid of a lot of Xmas things this year through my de-cluttering process, as I never have Xmas at my house. Family never comes here, and I often go somewhere else for that holiday. So I kept the best, donated a bunch of stuff including a small artificial tree to Habitat Restore. Another family will enjoy it this year. I am looking for a small metal tree to put ornaments on!
For you coffee lovers, Starbucks has their Thanksgiving Blend in the stores now. It is yummy, give it a try!
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So does giving people presents early represent a faux pas? My friend who was visiting from the east coast and I exchanged Xmas gifts last weekend when she was visiting. Xmas in October! More fun to open presents together than to just send the mail, right?
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Favorite part of Xmas is giving gifts to people and watching their faces as they open them up! The little kid in everyone comes out at Xmas!
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Teka- oh that is fun too! I buy great cards right after the new year and then store them for the following year. Pulled those out in October when I was cleaning out the garage stuff so they would be handy.
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I spoke to a couple of girlfriends recently and both of them were like oh but you look great and you just have to get on with it........I don´t think it is even worth bothering.......
I also notice I am now sooo intolerant of other people, keep on not listening to me over and over again and in the end I blow........why do people think I say something if I don´mean it?
I am not on any hormone modulators so cannot blame those but I really do not like myself anymore and I feel totally stuck, I just want to have a normalish body again and feel reasonably ok, a few scars are fine but a whacking great gap......I cannot go to the gym as anton else would and have a shpwer as they are communal showers and even the thought of it makes me feel ill, my heart pounds often even when i am doing nothing and I generally feel like xxxx and I am sick off feeling lik this, right now its worse as on the verge of tears all the time, yet a bloody gain......................
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Lilly- unfortunately, too many people say "get on with it" around many things in life. A death someone close, a relationship that has ended, looking for work, health issues. I have heard it every time something major has gone in my life. Perhaps I am different than some because I went through some really serious things with my family in my 20s to 30s and found out then what people are like in difficult situations. A few are there for you, most are not. Thank god for the good folks that show up.
About the gym, I had two surgeries in six weeks in 2012 that included a huge open abdominal incision and four incisions around my breast surgery. I looked horrible for a long time, but also was anxious to get back to the gym to exercise. So I rejoined the month after rads finished and eased into it. I was super self conscious in the pool, but just dressed in the bathroom stall and never showered at the gym. I went home to shower to avoid any issues around the body images. So if the showers are an obstacle at the gym, then just go home to shower after your work out. Can you do a trial membership to just try to see if that might work?
I had friend visiting last weekend who lost her dad to prostate cancer. She was supportive during my medical problems, but also far away so she did not see everything I went through. We were watching TV the final evening and there was something on about Pinktober and she made a comment about it being so great to raise awareness for screening and early detection. I told her I agreed, but that a whole month of talking about it is not easy on survivors. She made a strange comment and said "well the powers that be must have decided it would be a good thing." Powers that be? Who would that be? Anyways, I told myself at that point to stop and change the conversation. I am not going to make someone who has not had bc understand what October means to us. I will be honest and say outside of my sister, a few close friends and the ladies here, I don't ever bring it up. I am just not up for the stupid comments.
I do hear you are working your way through things, although nothing is easy around any of this. It is hard for others to understand how long it takes to come through this and that many of us live with long term SEs.
Hugs sister. Keep moving forward one step at a time.
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