Hi and welcome,

You have made a good choice in joining this friendly and supportive forum although I am sorry for the reason you joined.

Losing someone we love is a life changing experiance and brings home to us how little we can do to stop this terrible disease taking those we love from us. As well as having had prostate cancer myself I have lost several close femail relative including my mother so the tiitle of this post strike a cord with me.

I am a lot further down the line than you as I lost my mother over eight years ago. Al I can say is the pain does get less for over time as we learn to adjust to a new life that will never be the same but as you so rightly state, it does leave a big void that never goes away.

I know what a stressful time waiting is; thats something everyone on here agrees with. I hope that when the tests have been completed, they show there is nothing to worry about.

Sending best wishes and kind thoughts your way, Brian.

Hello Brian,

Thank you so much for the warm welcome! I am so happy to hear you beat Prostate Cancer. What a scary and life changing journey that had to have been yet here you are, like so many others on here, helping other people walk down similar paths. I am so sorry for the loss of your mother as well. Thank you for sharing your experiences with me, it is actually really helpful and reassuring. Sometimes these experiences can feel very isolating, if that makes sense. I guess I never talked about it much- maybe I felt that a lot of people didn't understand as they would try to say something helpful, but a lot of times I just ended up feeling worse.

No matter what age, I don't think one can ever prepare for the loss of a parent, or a close loved one for that matter. I will never forget all of the different emotions I felt while my Dad was so ill. I know people lose parents at a younger age than I did, but I felt so angry that he was being taken away too soon, that I was only 33 and should have had more time with him, etc. I felt so helpless and almost useless in a sense, just standing by and watching it all unfold and not being able to do a thing about it. My Dad fought cancer with everything that he had but at the end, it just felt like it was all for nothing. After he died, I was so completely overwhelmed with the pain of such a loss, and then just felt sort of lost in the world, not knowing how to live my life without him in it. I have since come to realize that I will never be the same person that I was before he died. His death changed me in many ways. It made me remember to not take life or the people in it for granted. It has given me a clarity almost, a greater sense of empathy and understanding. Maybe it's because when you go through such hellish experiences, you really do understand what that is like, and that drives you to do what you can to help other people going through something similar. Maybe it is healing too. At least that's how I look at it anyway.

But I have also realized that no matter how much time has passed, or how much you keep learning to adjust to life without that person, that void is always there. And the hardest part is having to accept is that nothing can make that better, short of that person coming back to life. 

Thank you as well for the encouraging words about my upcoming tests. My CA 125 was elevated at 90, so that has got me on edge. I want to hope everything turns out OK, but it's impossible not to worry. Google is NOT your friend during times like these!

Hope you are enjoying your day,

Liz

Hi Liz,

Thank you for your reply. I always advise if using google to stick to well know sites such as Cancer Research, Macmillan ect. When I was diagnosed I looked at many site for it's only natural to want to find as much information as possible. But I found some sites had not been updated for years and other were at best missleading. The American ones were the worst as they tended to promote their products or services. I felt they were not giving independant advice like the ones I have mentioned.

Your feelings matched mine when my mother was in the later stages of her breast cancer. I felt so useless for there was nothing I could do. When I was young my mother always looked after me and cured my illness but I couldnt do it for her and I found this so hard to deal with.

I feel that losing serveral relative plus having had cancer myself has changed the person I used to be. I now appreciate the simple little things.in life so much more and and more understanding of other peoples problems.

Take care, best wishes, Brian.

Hi Brian,

I completely agree about the American websites. I have found the Cancer Research one to be pretty helpful. It is amazing- or should I say amazingly disturbing that there is so much inaccurate information out there. 

You just described exactly how I felt. I remember thinking that all of my life my Dad was always there to help me, but when the time came that he was the one who needed help, I couldn't help him. It was so difficult to deal with. Thank you again for sharing your experiences with me and taking the time to listen to all of my blabbering on. Writing about my own experiences and reading about other people's experiences feels better than I ever thought it would. 

Why does it have to be that the most painful experiences are the ones that teach us the most?