Cancer Is Sometimes Harder on Loved Ones than on Patients
24. Aug, 2010 
7 Comments
We patients have our plans of attack and are engaged in the battle, leaving those who care for us feeling helpless on the sidelines.
This is a new thought that entered my consciousness last week. It was one of my exceptionally trying days in my new Lupron-induced reality. I was physically exhausted and the fatigue was pounding a battering ram at my seriously weakened emotional gates. One look at me must have provided a full and unedited communique from the front line.
It was then that my wife confided that she wished she could do something for me–to make it all better and relieve me of this challenge. At least following my surgery, she was able to do something to make me comfortable and aid in the healing process. But, in dealing with the side effects of androgen deprivation therapy, she is feeling powerless to make a difference.
This was an epiphany. I thought back to when my sisters were voicing their anger that this should be happening to me. I have never felt angry. I didn’t have the time to be angry. My mission was to beat the cancer.
I am beginning to believe that in our journeys, we patients are so focused on executing on our plan of attacks, passing milestones and moving forward that we don’t have the time to focus on much more. It is a kind of blessed distraction. However, our loved ones and friends, are forced to observe from the sidelines and watch in dismay.
Think of any movie about a prize fighter. As he takes the beating in the middle of the fight he goes on, driven by adrenaline to receive blow after the blow, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He may be a bit dazed, but he has no choice but to continue reacting or lose the fight. It’s the spectators who have the vantage point to actually see the consequences of the fight. They react but can’t do anything to change the events that are playing out before their eyes. Their champion is in danger and they feel helpless.
This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting one of this blog’s readers at the Us Too advocacy meeting in Chicago. His name is Craig P. I shared my new thinking with him and he heartily agreed. On Monday he wrote back on the subject.
“First of all,” Craig wrote, “I completely agree with your hypothesis. I can give you two examples. My wife, Susan, remarked that on the several occasions she accompanied me to the radiation oncology center in Spring 2009 were times of immense loneliness as she sat in the waiting room while I was being treated. She stated that, “I could feel loneliness permeate the room even though the small waiting area was filled with people–some of them chatting with each other while their loved ones were being treated, others staring off into the distance.” Even though she was geographically very close to the room where I was lying on the treatment couch, I may as well been a million miles away, because being in that waiting room without me was a dramatic and tangible reminder of the permanent separation she knew she would experience if my cancer were to prove fatal. Happily, that day has not come, but there’s no question it is a heavy psychological burden lurking just below the surface of our quotidian lives.”
Craig continued, “My second example comes from reading many posts at the advancedprostatecancer.net board (sponsored by Malecare), where it is the wife or daughter writing about their husband or father as he experiences the end game of metastasized prostate cancer. Behind the words of care and concern that these women express for their men as they seek answers form other members of this board about who to see or what to do next, I can hear wounded sighs and latent hopelessness as they, too, experience loneliness—and often exhaustion as the sole caregiver—all while presenting a brave and optimistic face to their men. The psychological toll must be enormous. One wants to reach out through the Internet and hold these brave women in an embrace, if only to provide a moment of succor.”
It’s true that cancer affects everyone in one’s family. How could it not?
But the truth is that no matter how helpless our loved ones may sometimes feel, they are giving us the most powerful medicine we can take at this point in our lives by just opening their arms and letting us pour ourselves into them when we need them most. We can continue fighting buoyed by cheers of encouragement from their hearts.
Dan Zenka, senior vice president of the 
This is exactly what I said to my husband, who was diagnosed with Prostate cancer last week. Luckily we believe it is a slow growing form that was caught early. It upsets me that people express concern for him, yet never ask how I an handling it. He handles it by going to work each day and I am home to make the calls to insurance, field phone calls. Even though it was caught early it is very scary for me. I have already buried one husband when I was 22. It scares me that I could bury another. Thanks for voicing what so many feel.
Dan, Am glad you said “sometimes” as for my husband and friends like you, I struggle with not being able to do anything for these beautiful men. To stand by and watch our men be in shock when diagnosed. Research treatment options and take action. To be so happy for those men surviving. Sad for the men who go undiagnosed and may die from prostate cancer. After my husband had OC surgery, I will advocate for Prostate Cancer Awareness till my last days. By sharing on your blog, Dan, you share with compassion and reality how the journey really is. My eyes water only when I see my hubby struggle or the thought of living life without him. This goes for all men on the journey with PC.
Dan:
Send your wife to Dana’s web site HisProstateCancer.com) and give her Dana’s wives’ and spouses’ “Bill of Rights” to stick on the refrigerator (for her benefit and yours).
You can find the “Bill of Rights” reproduced today (Wednesday) on The “New” Prostate Cancer InfoLink.
Dan,
Thank you for your courage and commitment to spread the word about Prostate Cancer. I’d like to introduce you and the wives and partners of prostate cancer patients to an organization based in Washington, DC, called Women Against Prostate Cancer. We are a national organization working to usite the voices of, and provide support for, the millions of women affected by prostate cancer and their families. WAPC advocates prostate cancer education, prevention, screenings, legislatioin, and treatment options. We recognize that prostate cancer is not just a man’s disease because it impacts the ENTIRE FAMILY. The emotional, mental and physical strains on a relationship should not be faced alone. Please visit http://Www.WomenAgainstProstateCancer.org and learn more about us.
Dan,
It’s been a busy week at advancedprostatecancer.net as more wives come to the board, seeking answers to enormously complex questions involving everything from how to work with the Medicare bureaucracy to the interaction of calcium deficiency and chemo. Many of them are at the end of their emotional rope, as witness one woman’s heart-rending plea, “Everything I read is soooo dismal! I need some hope!”
For women to be forced to be simultaneously advocates, to perform the technical research and fight the bureaucratic battles, all while having to bear the emotional weight of seeing the man they love fall ill and too often waste away, and for them to feel so alone is to ask far too much of these wonderful women who truly understand–and practice–the full meaning of the vow, “in sickness and in health.”
It is for these women, as much as for their husbands and fathers, that we guys who have the disease and who are able to speak up for them, and to be there for them, even if only by email, really have a moral responsibility to do so and to help carry their load if only for a moment.
Thank you, Dan, for speaking so passionately about this too often forgotten aspect of this “family disease.”
-Craig
Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!