mentalhealth - mywifehascancer.blog

How to find your mental anchor in life

Life can feel like hurtling through space on an out of control spaceship at times. You need a space anchor to be thrown and stop you (are those a thing? It would be like a ships anchor, but hooked to what – a planet I guess? Need to invent it somehow).

There are so many things that come hurtling towards you, that you need a way to stay fixed to something, and be grounded (not sure the space anchor line works with that now, but I’m gonna go with it, I’m too far in to change). Anchoring keeps you grounded, and able to survive the challenges you face in life. A great article by Dr Jessica Brown https://www.drjessicabrown.com/theblogposts/2019/4/24/whats-your-anchor#:~:text=It’s%20the%20thing%20that%20keeps,makes%20you%20who%20you%20are., explains how your anchor is your why, the essence of who you are. This can be spiritual beliefs, family, meaningful work or hobbies, or daily rituals. We’ve all seen those short blogs by people saying what their morning routine is (‘I get up at 4, spend 2 hours in the gym before eating a spinach smoothie and then sending 300 spam emails’ type of thing.) But this is grounding, having an anchor.

Why is this something that has come to mind for me? Well, I have alot of moving parts in my life we could say. My wife has her illness, with all the uncertainty that can bring (a prime example here https://mywifehascancer.blog/archives/922), which means to me it feels like my family anchor has gone. That lifetime partner, the one who you chose to share your life with, living with the knowledge that will not be the case twists your melons, and slowly breaks your brain. I have to work extra hard to stop the negative thoughts and worrys from taking over.

But it also means that the anchor of coming home after a hard day at work is gone – I will come home and start my second job, caring for my wife and making her life as good as possible. I put my daily concerns to the back of my mind, as in context they are not anywhere near as significant. I have written before a long ago that the joy of Friday nights has now gone, that feeling of looking forward to the end of the work week doesnt come for me.

And on the subject of work, because of the worry about my wife, my work does struggle. I find it hard to concentrate on days when we have a hospital appointment, even if all I am doing is acting a taxi service as she wont want me to come in. To switch between sitting in a hospital car park to jumping on a zoom call and solving accounting problems is immense, and while I found that much easier 5, 6 or 7 years ago, doing it every few months for years on end has taken its toll. The brain cannot keep undergoing that level of stress for too long (https://mywifehascancer.blog/archives/929).

Couple with that right now is the ongoing redundancy process I am involved with, and the length of time this is going on for. Not a happy environment in the office these days. So work isnt an anchor either (though I’m not sure it ever was).

Family should be something to rely on, but as mentioned above, with my wife ill, our home life can be very erratic. Our daughter is away at Uni, so we dont see her much, and have to try and help her to cope with her challenges in life. Our son is 13, and he has all the challenges of modern school, and the demands on him to deal with, whilst also having had a sick mother for over two thirds of his life. If that doesnt lead to therapy in later life, I dont know what will. So again, that is another anchor that is unsteady.

Other family live away from us, but we also have lots of good friends around. And we have some really good friends. As the Gene song says “It’s time to tell my friends I love them”. (Did I mention Gene have reformed, and I have tickets? Our favourite band of 25 years ago, who we saw at every London gig are back baby). They look out for me. Friends from different stages are anchors in different ways – the school friends who still share the same jokes 35 years on. The Uni friends who we have drunk way too much with, and grown up with, attended each others marriages, and are god parents to their children (Hi Aurelia!). And the friends made during our children attending school, bonding over a love of music and red wine. These are the relationships we need to develop and feed.

My interests have waned since the pressure of the last few years. Attention span for many folks has shrunk, particularly post covid, and I am no exception. Whereas previously I would read a book for hours on end, I feel the need for that dopamine shot of the phone, checking social media or the news, searching for that next high. And like most drugs, that high wears off pretty darn quick. But by then the damage is done, and a few minutes is wasted, followed by a few more minutes, until guilt kicks in, and your brain tries to realign. But then thinks, well the day is already wasted, so why try?

I have to force myself to enjoy my hobbies, and this is a good piece of advice I try to push on my son (my daughter already has this down pat). Put the phone physically somewhere else. Listen to a record end to end. No skipping tracks. Read a full chapter of a book. Watch a tv programme without the phone constantly on wikipedia. Watch football without texting a friend to gloat. That last one would be harder if I wasnt a Manchester United fan. Its been a tough few years. I dont mind not winning, but we are just awful to watch. My son has only known this rubbish.

I think the main crux of this is that life isnt easy anyway, but when caring for someone else, the time to look after yourself and find your moments of pleasure and happiness is not easy to find either. With all the demands on your time, you can feel guilty trying to look after yourself. After all, why prioritise that, when it is your wife that is terminally ill? I can rest later cant I? But what if that later never comes? We have been lucky that my wife has exceeded her prognosis, but in the maelstrom of those early years bouncing through chemo appointments and hospital visits, I would argue that I didnt properly look after myself, and am now reaping the crops of that (terrible metaphor I know).

One of my close friends said recently that I have never been the same since my wife had her stroke in 2018 (https://mywifehascancer.blog/archives/66). And when I look back to that time, it was one of the most stressful experiences anyone could have, spending days and weeks travelling to a hospital to sit by the bedside of my wife in a coma, having watched them put her under, not knowing if we were to see her again. But at that time I didnt think that way – I assume everything would work out fine, dopey optimism in my consciousness, whereas my subconscious must have been screaming to be heard. I didnt work on my mental strength, and I lost my anchor at that point. We were all changed from that point on.

So what is my advice to anyone dealing with similar issues? How do you find your mental anchor? Look after yourself as a carer. Thats it. You are useless if you do not look after yourself. Dont prioritise yourself over your partner or whoever you look after, but dont let it slide. I say that from bitter experience, as to not look after yourself means that it will take much more hard work to keep yourself going. Get the routine going, get hobbies and exercise into your day, meet with friends and talk about music or football or rugby or Disney or whatever the hell you enjoy. Remember the essence of who you are, and dont just be a carer, be yourself, who also has the super power of looking after someone else who needs your support.

Thanks

Thanks for reading, and if you like what I have written, maybe consider funding some of my coffee or beer habit.

Cancer and the slow decline

Today I want to talk a little about what I find one of the hardest issues we face with my wife. She is currently in a cycle of not having treatment, which is great, as she can work on getting over her last bout of radiotherapy. We have had a summer break, been away, and now the children are back at school. The next scan is in a few weeks.

We do notice that she gets very tired easily though. And this will lead to her falling asleep early, into a dead sleep on the sofa at 8 PM if we have been out somewhere. The knock on to our family life, aside from her snoring over She Hulk, is that she will then awaken at strange times, and start to engage in cleaning or tidying. She always had an almost OCD mindset, but the cancer has made this much worse. Coupled with her lack of sight on her left hand side, we have to ensure things are done as she wants them to be. Which for the sight aspect is fine, but not so easy when it is because she has a whim and wants things done in a particular way. I feel we live on egg shells worried that we have put something away in a cupboard in the wrong place, and that the inevitable fury will reign down. As you can imagine it does not make our home life relaxing at all.

The last lot of scans stilled showed the disease now on the liver, and apparently some in her pelvis. I dont know now how much further this has spread, or how fast it spreads. She has some pain in the stomach area, which is where this journey started all those years ago. I feel that all we do these days is ‘kick the can down the road’ waiting for when we get something that will warrant a round of treatment of some sort.

And this is where the slow decline comes in. As an analogy, you have two options when taking off a plaster – fast or slow. One brings a short, sharp pain, the other a duller slower pain. Neither is easy, but sometimes it is best to get it over quickly. And as you can tell, that is what is happening here. My wifes decline is the slow pull, a gradual decline, and it leaves us with years of pain, never getting ourselves quite back on track. Things will never be the same as they were before her diagnosis, however I do feel we are being held back, the rest of us not able to move on. This sounds callous, and I realise that, but the other point is that my wife is not the same woman she was, she isnt able to do the same things she was before. At some point her quality of life will decline significantly enough that she wont be able to be on her own, and a final indignity will hit.

This slow decline has destroyed my marriage. We dont do any of the things that a normal couple do. No date nights, no physical contact, nothing that a loving couple can do together. Our relationship is as a patient and carer. I feel my life has been put on hold, trapped in a marriage now that is never going to improve. I cant move on with my life.

I dont want to leave my wife behind, I want to have the life we had, but understand that is impossible. But the life of a carer is a hard one – I am the one who takes the blame when something isnt right in the house, I get the brunt when she has been out with her friends and is then tired in the evening. I have to tidy away and look after the children and house after trying to concentrate at work all day. And I do all this because I have a duty. But it would be good to have some time off.

The thing I hate about writing that, is that my wife cant have a day off. And that is where the cruelness of cancer comes in. It is relentless, it doesnt give any respite, and unless you are one of the lucky ones, it will not end in a happy way. My family is trapped at the whim of this diease, waiting for the plaster to finally come off, knowing that only then can we rub the pain better, and move on. Sometimes it feels that we are all just hanging around. It would have been tough, but at least of we had lost her before, we would have been able to deal with the grief, instead of effectively grieving for a years on end.

To end on a different note, I have mentioned previously my love of music, and last night we watched the Taylor Hawkins tribute gig on MTV. I was gutted not to be able to go – I had tickets to see the Foo Fighters earlier this year, but that was cancelled when he died, and my brother in law was at Wembley. However, money worries stopped that for me.

I thought the gig was great – a brilliant tribute to an obviously well loved friend. Some tears, some laughs, and lots of amazing music. Violet Grohl and Shane Hawkins were there to carry on from their parents, and I hope my children honour their mother as well as they honoured their father and friend.

Global Mental Health Day

Today is Global Mental Health Day, and I thought it worthwhile putting down some thoughts. I’m not going to claim that I fully understand what it is like to have a mental health issue, but I do know that I am personally working through a variety of issues. I have seen counsellors, and through that understand that I am trying to comprehend a lot of factors from the events of the last few years. Grief for the loss of the way of life we once had, grief for the loss of the wife I had, concern at how things will turn out for her in the future, fear of what may happen at any moment, on top of the pain of dealing with the various traumatic events that have occurred. Now don’t get me wrong, my wife has lost so much more, but our lives have been changed 100% from where they were.

Why mention this today? Posters in my office are raising awareness of Mental Health Day, with a focus on suicide, and the need to ask people how they are – ask twice being a theme. And posters giving facts that most, if not all of us will answer 14 times a day to the question how are you, with I’m fine. I’ve done it today, you probably have. But today I know that that isn’t true – today was one of the days when I could feel dark clouds descending this morning, for no obvious reason, other than it being a nice morning, and not wanting to waste time at a desk. That triggered overwhelming thoughts of despair, and I have spent the day feeling like I am walking through water, and that at any point I may trip and go under. My heart is heavy, I feel unmotivated, and am struggling with doing anything. All I really want to do is go back to bed and stay there warm under the covers, blocking out the world. But when people ask that question, I force a thin smile, and reply, fine, what about you. Not many people know what has happened in our lives – it is my choice to keep it private in work, but it means that on days like this I fight my own corner. And I understand that is stupid, that a problem shared and all that….

I should respond with a not great thanks, few things on my mind, but we don’t do that do we. We bottle it up for fear of showing a weakness to the world. I also feel that unless I have a physical problem, it isn’t real – my wife has a real, calculable illness, we can see it, measure it – she has a right to feel depressed, but for the rest of us…

I didn’t know what I was going to write at the start of this, and am not sure if I have got where I thought I would. Just a splurge of words, but sometimes a splurge is better than nothing. I’m no specialist, but I know what I am feeling, and am trying to understand how to cope with it. I try to go for a run, or listen to music, but a lot of things that used to bring pleasure simply don’t anymore.

I don’t have an answer, everyone deals their own way. Keep on keeping on.

PS The following sometimes helps me: