Dec. 24th 2004: Brian had recently been discharged from Hospital & was suffering the after effects of his treatment
I was traveling into the Hospital for a Biopsy following a routine Mammogram.As the Labs were closing for the holiday, I would have to wait till Jan 6th for the results, which I had correctly guessed would be positive
We cancelled Xmas that year.

Dec.2007: What a difference.We are both recovered,Brian will be cooking the Christmas meal & we are determined to enjoy the season.

I want to wish everybody,old friends &
new, A Peaceful Christmas. To those who are undergoing treatment, A pain free Christmas, & to our Friends Down under, who may have already celebrated, hope you have had a good day. Brian & Fran.

Good for you two Fran. Enjoy xmas and all the best. Xmas 1997 was cancelled for me as I had to start RT on January 6th 1998. Time soon passes and I've never been better. Happy Xmas.

Hi Fran,

This time last year Robert too had just finished treatment and been discharged from hospital. It wasn't an ideal Christmas as he could barely drink let alone eat, was dosed up on morphine and sleeping a lot. This Christmas it's just nice that he's been given the all clear and things are on the up.

For you to have also suffered from cancer is just dreadful. Congratulations on going into battle not once but twice and winning.

I wish both yourself and Brian a very healthy, happy Christmas and New Year.

Lorraine

Last Christmas i had a husband.

Last Christmas I did not know Liz

quote:

Originally posted by cookey:
Last Christmas i had a husband.

Me too Cookey

Dearest Liz and Joy and all the others,

I know it really tough loosing a person so close to you. I honestly did not realise how much till I was made to sit and think of the future. However, one comes into this world and does his bit and leaves - its the cycle of life.
What is the best way to overcome all the sadness and missing the loved person - by just remembering the happy moments you shared and also knowing you will meet that person somewhere else - who knows?

Lots of love, xxx and hugs,
Ananth

This loss is the most unimaginable pain i have ever felt,and contrary to popular belief it doesn't get better with time.Every day that passes just accentuates the lonliness,and the gaping great hole left by Robin can NEVER be filled by my family or my Grandaughters.
It is a personal thing between two people,the site of them,the sound of them,the touch of them,the godawful knowledge that every day you will wake up alone,and every thing you ever do for the rest of your days will be on your own,or as the odd one out in a group.Cerain parts of your life are just over,and there is no substitute,and all the time you wake and breathe and eat,and all you want to do is turn the clock back,or wake up and realise it was all a cruel dream.

But it wasn't ,and cancer gets the last laugh.

Liz...I read your above post and quite frankly it made me very sad for you when I read it. As you probably know I don't write here very often as I'm still having a hard time dealing with my own problems from this awful disease called cancer and I find reading about everyone elses problems and reading about relatively young people dying from throat cancer serves only to make me sad and depressed. I have always been a very strong person and like Ananth think I have lived life until I got cancer King Size! Believe or not, 2 weeks ago at my last appointment with my surgeon who supervises my follow up care and treatment...when I complained to her about the severe nuoprathy in my hands and feet, fatigue which causes me to sleeep 10 hours a night and still having this thick nasty saliva in my mouth 9 months post treatment she said "maybe under the circumstances you need to stop your whining and suck it up" to which I smiled and said "maybe your right". Needless to say I thought about her comment for quite a while and decided maybe she was right even though I initially did not like what she said. The bottom line is I'm still alive, I'm working at about 60% capacity, I get to spend time with my daughter and I actually went to Spain for 2 weeks over the holidays for a vacation with my daughter and my brother and his family. Is life great...NO! Do I sometimes wonder if dying would be better then living a diminished quality of life at the age of 55...YES! Am I very slowly feeling better each month...I think YES even though it seems so slow I can hardly stand it. Do I like now spending every holiday wondering if I will live to see the same holiday again next year... HELL NO. Am I terrified of dying...NO and I do not even believe in any afterlife. Notwithstanding all of the foregoing I'm happy to be alive and maybe I'll be one of the fortunate ones to beat this awful disease...WHO KNOWS?. So I'm going to stop my whining and SUCK IT UP! And so I've decided I'm going to go back and try to live my remaining life weather it be months or many years KING SIZE!
So your alive and physically healthy, and I do believe things will get better if you want them to. Their must be a life for you after Robin and in time maybe even another man for you to grow old with so you don't have to be all alone and the odd one out. I see how much time you spend on this site and the ocf site and how much you try to be loving and sweet to everyone who writes a post. Your obviously a sweet and loving person and you deserve better then to spend your life being sad and lonely. I'm sure your Robin would have wanted better for you. I think everyone on this site wants better for you as you seem to be truly loved by all(most of the time!). So without being offended please.... maybe you need to stop your whining and suck it up too. Your too sweet and nice to spend your life on these sites and I know you deserve better then to spend your remaining years being sad and lonely. I know you deserve it and you can do it in time. Please know that writing this post actually brought tears to my eyes as I know for me "sucking it up" will not be easy. So I hope you know that this post is only written with the best of intentions.
Luv, Steven

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Steven,

Dear Liz
Where is the girl who was having such a great holiday only a few weeks ago? Sounds like you've fallen into a deep, dark hole. I know those holes well (no pun intended!) and they are scary, lonely, horrible places and when you're at the bottom of one you JUST KNOW the walls are way too high and you'll never get out of there (and sometimes don't want to). The truth is that you will. I'm sure you know that and somehow you just have go with the flow for a while til the waters take you close enough to the top for you to gather your strength and clamber over the side to a much lighter and brighter place.
It isn't a 'given' that you will be alone forever but who knows, maybe you will be. That isn't necessarily a bad thing because that aloneness may well be on your own terms ~ how liberating, the best of both worlds.
What I'm trying to say is hang in there, love. Life can truly be a right royal bitch, as we all know. This dark time will pass and you'll find purpose once again. We're all feeling for you.
Love
Deborah
OX
PS How about showing yourself a good dose of the kindness you show to everyone else?????? (There's a good girl then ~ D)

Hi Steven
What a great post. That could not have been easy for you to write. It's a bit of a slug to the airbags to have someone be blunt with you as your dr was but if it helps to get you thinking and assessing where you're at then in the long run you'll be better off for it.
It's been a while since you posted and it seems times haven't been easy for you. Sorry to hear that. The trouble with this whole cancer thing is that it makes you more aware of the possibility that life can be cut short. The truth is that any one of us could get hit by a bus this very day ~ cancer or no cancer. Maybe you won't get to have that holiday next year ~ I don't have cancer (that I know of) but maybe I won't be around next year either and that's why we all have to be sure that everything we do this year, this day is the best it can be for us beacuse there are no guarantees. Good luck, Steve. Onwards and upwards.
Love from Down Under
Deborah
ox

Me again!
I'm always so afraid I'm going to steal someone's thread by putting my two bob's worth in where I shouldn't BUT following on from Steven's post I would like to share something I have had on my noticeboard for the last 13 years or so. I have always believed we shouldn't make assumptions about life and these words summed it up for me (mind you, although I think this way, I'm guilty of not always appreciating what I have)
I'll have to put all the info here as I don't want to be run in for plagiarism!
Death and Dying
We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922). French novelist Remembrance of Things Past, vol 6, "The Guermantes Way", pt 2, ch 1 (1921; tr.by Ronald and Odette Corties, 1988).
D

Deborah

What a quotation! It really spoke to me as I was thinking earlier today that I feel really lucky to be alive but at the same time I am acutely aware of the fragility of life and the fact that it could end at any time. I don't know if these feelings do make me live any differently but I certainly feel that they should.

Thank you
Love
Gwyn

Liz, come on gal,everyone is routing for you, we all feel for you and I cannot put it better than those who have written ahead of me. No one can undue what has gone before. Now is the time to look forward, count your blessings, you have many, just look at those children and sweet grand children. Be thankful for the time you had with Rob, enjoy his memory and get ready for the rest of your life because that is what he would have wanted.

The minute i pressed the "post now" button,i knew someone would tell me to stop whining.I also know that i have no place on this or any other forum any more.
The bottom line is,that i feel as if this forum and the OCF are the last delicate thread that connects me to Robin and to people who know and most of all understand the trauma of the journey we took during the short duration of his illness.

No one in my real life ever talks about him.No one in my real life EVER asks how i am doing or how i feel.No one in my real life cares that he is gone,they just carry on as if nothing has happened.
Every one wants something from me babysitting,help with the housework,advice on the kids,and they never think of all the evenings and weekends when i am on my own.The time i spend trying to keep up this facade of the strong bounceback,mother,daughter,grandmother,that they want me to be.They think that the life they share with their partners are the exclusive domain of the young,and shouldn't apply to me and worst of all they think i am wierd because i continue to participate in things to do with oral Cancer.
Every time i read of all the success stories on here i force my self to reply straight away with congratulations and good wishes,and inside all i really feel is "why them,why not us?"

I met Robin late in life,he was like my second chance,and he opened up a world of love to me that i didn't know existed.He was not an easy man to love,but he and i connected in a way i never thought possible.His strength,his health,his larger than life personality completely overshadowed me,and even our torrid rows always made me feel alive and passionate.

The cancer forums make me feel useful,and i try to always sound upbeat and positive to all newcomers,even though every story i read and every poor soul who is clinging to hope by their fingernails just makes me want to scream at the top of my voice,dont trust the doctors,dont ever let your guard down,watch out,this disease will take every thing from you if you let it.


Did we let it? should i have insisted that Rob had chemo as well as radiation?,should i have told the doctors he was still drinking,?should we have pestered the doctors during the two months post TX when he wasn't seen at the hospital? could i have done anything more? Why did God take my second chance away? maybe he thought i didn't deserve it.

I am sorry to have hurt or offended any of you here who are fighting your own battle,you are quite right there is no place here for selfpitying losers,and at the end of the day we did lose,and all of you are winning.
I can't go on being the spectre at your feast its not fair on any of you,and somehow i have to move away from this world.
Maybe getting a job at the Hospice wasn't such a good one after all,but never the less i am going to ring them now and get a start date,and try to find something to help to fill this massive void.


I did enjoy my holiday,for the simple reason that it took me away from the life i had with Robin into a world he wasn't part of, nothing to remind me, nowhere i went where i thought he would be,no pictures, and going back to the cocoon of life with my nuclear family(Mum my brother and me),but like all good things,it came to an end,and i left Mum behind,so i don't have her here either.
If it hadn't been for ,Robin i would never have gone,as it has taken his death to make me overcome the limitations to my life brought on by the morbid fear of flying.It has also made me realise i should never put anything off till tomorrow,because tomorrow might not come.


I wish all you guys the very best of luck and love in your own personal battles,and i will be thrilled in the future to hear that Michelle and Amir have produced a new life from her massive sucess story,what a result that will be for the good guys.


If anyone has gained anything from Rob's story that helps them in their battle,i am glad.No ones death should be in vain,and we can learn valuable lessons from other peoples mistakes and experiences,after all this is what the foundation is all about.


My fondest love to you all and thanks for your support,tomorrow it will be six months since he went and it feels like yesterday.

liz

This message has been edited. Last edited by: cookey,