In April my lovely husband was diagnosed with bowel and secondary liver cancer. He’s always been so healthy, swam three times a week, careful what he ate. Always such a mentally strong person. He knows the right answer for anyone who needs help. He started having chemo in May and was reacting brilliantly to it. Everyone commented on how well he looked, the tumour marker was decreasing and we were/are forever hopeful. Then his 5th session out of 6 we came crashing down. In his 57th birthday he developed pain and diarrhoea, then constipation. Within a week he was admitted to hospital and that night we were told he had a perforated bowel and sepsis. The prognosis was bad, 3-4 days at the most. They gave antibiotics but said there’s 1 percent chance of this working, and they decided because of the cancer that they wouldn’t perform CPR as it was too brutal. They then said there was also an abscess. We managed 2 weeks in hospital where I slept on the floor next to him. We finally left with 6 weeks worth of antibiotics. Fast forward to another scan on 2nd October which showed the perforation had healed and the abscess gone. We were elated this meant the chemo could continue after the 6 weeks. Two days later and he gets constipated and hasn’t been to the loo for a week. We have laxatives, but seem to be taking ages to work. He’s getting annoyed with me that I keep asking how he feels and our son won’t leave him alone text after text after text, which is driving him mad. He’s just so sick of ‘a bit of good news’ then a load of bad, time and time again. I’m struggling to keep his spirits up, he seems permanently quiet. Definitely won’t talk to a therapist or any professional help. I’m struggling to know how I can help him through this. I’ve told our son to back off a bit, which upset him, as he idolises his dad. He is annoyed if I’m going any housework and basically wants me to just sit in the lounge with him. We’ve always been active people without a minute to sit down and so I find that quite hard, especially with things piling up around me. It’s not about me, but we’ve been married for 30 years, he’s only 57. All our retirement plans we’ve saved for seem like they’re gone and nothing about our lives resemble before the cancer. I’m not sure what to do for the best
