It's  New Years Eve and I'm sat eating left over  Christmas day pat'e  and a large glass of vodka.  I remember the days when we lived it up in the Bay Horse at Heighington and everyone called me the Queen Bee!! Such good friends and so much laughter and drink.  How many have gone, Alice, Brian, David, George, and many more I could name.  I hope my hubby is not added to next year's list, but who knows.  He is coughing again, struggling to walk and just wants to stay home.  Rump steak,  mushrooms and eggs for him, we have had a letter saying an urgent blood test is required,  I'm not expecting good news.  All our family have gone home to their normal lives but I know they are thinking is this the last Christmas with Dad.  No one has voiced it but it hangs in the air like a black cloud.   I'm going to have another vodka and wish you all the best for the New Year  but I know that some will have a hard time and many of us will be left on our own.  Love Caz.

New years day and I try to put on a cheery face with his cup of tea, but I feel a black fog hovering over me, I have had horrible nightmares about people dying (might have something to do with the vodka) and feel uneasy.  I am met with a grunt and a depressed hubby,  this is not going to be a good day.  The scar on his leg has opened up due to thin skin and he can hardly walk.  I push down the fear inside me and try to be pragmatic.   Plasters don't work, I run up and down the stairs with different bandages, get the crutches out and we make it to the bathroom.   When he comes down he informs me he had the most miserable new years eve ever, he obviously forgot I was in the house suffering the same fate.   I'm furious and get in the car to get papers.  I sit and read mine in the car to calm down.  I am sick of being the person getting the backlash of his disappointing cancer life, I feel trapped and angry at where we are in our life.   Many phone calls later from well wishers I cheer up and a friend texts to say going to the pub.  We get ready, enjoy three hours, lots of Guinness for him and a bar stool, mellowed out and home for tea.  Another topsy Turvey day in cancer world.

It's another day in my world of nurse, chief cook and bottle washer and the day looks like I feel dreary and gloomy! My first job is to wash his wounds and sort out plasters of different sizes, we now have another sore spot due to sitting on a pub bar stool for three hours! When I come to the last plaster it's missing,  we hunt the bed for it and his back to make sure he hasn't laid on it, no luck so another one is got out.  I go and finish making the beds and lo and behold what is stuck to my jumper, correct,  the plaster.  We have to go to the opticians as he has managed to put his specs on his newspaper  and then place his full weight on them when he stands up, I'm handed an arm,  a loose lens and asked if I can do anything with them, the answer is NO.  When we were in the pub yesterday everyone was discussing their gifts and my friend said her hubby had bought her the CD she wanted, oh yes he says The Dustbin Man, we look at each other and burst out laughing,  I think  you mean The Rag and Bone Man we both say, I think the late night and three hours of drinking had kicked in by then.  It's nice to be able to laugh with friends and try to live a relatively normal life, if only it was every day!  See you tomorrow. 

We have to be up early as we are off to James Cook to do something about his leg.   We arrive and have to walk about twenty yards away so I tell him to stand and wait whilst I get a wheelchair.  Steve the prosthetic guy gets a wheel chair and goes to get him,  he has staggered across the road and is as grey as a squirrel.   I'm furious that he tried to walk and am very cross with him.   It can wait I will tell him in private.   I am sick of his macho personality in front of others,  what if he fell, we would be in so much trouble with broken bones or facial wounds.   I refuse to go up with him, so I get a coffee and start a new Karen Rose novel.  One and a half hours of peace and quiet! !  I wheel him back to the car and tell him off for doing what he did, he thinks it funny.  How do people cope with this?  We get home and have lunch and I start taking the trees and decorations down, Christmas is officially over in more ways than one!!

We both have a bad nights sleep due to coughing and hobbling around on a leg that still doesn't fit, despite hours of our time sorting it yesterday.  I stagger out of bed at 8.45 am,  wishing I could just Bury my head in the pillow and not face the day.  Cups of tea a lecture on how bad a job has been done yesterday, I clench my teeth and tell him to go back to bed after redressing his big toe because he had stood on it during the night with his false foot!!   I have a shower and set too on the kitchen.  Just to ad to my happy life my cleaner was in a car crash on Friday and has severe whiplash, I have a sever lack of a sense of humour at the moment knowing I now have EVERYTHING to do.  He comes down mid day full of grumbles,  can he have toast and tea so he can take his medication  he asks meekly.  I think he knows I am taking the brunt of everything but what   can we do?  The world is against us and it's only the 4th January! !  Off to see nurse again, not happy with toe, what a surprise!   Bloods done wounds dressed back out into the pouring rain,  what a lovely day, it's never going to get light today.  I buy the last 4 mince pies fot ten pence in Sainsbury and we drive home, cup of tea with our bargain, beef curry for tea as trying to get protein into him. I just sit down and the phone rings,  my friend to wish me a happy new year plus the news that Bert ie (cat, not hubby) has had to be put down over Christmas, I pretend to be sympathetic but am struggling with the loss of a cat to the probable loss of a husband!!  Now have to see doctor 8.30 am. Tomorrow to see if he has another chest infection.  Somewhere in between these appointments I'm hoping to fit coffee and cake in with my best friend.   Wish me luck!

Hi Caz, 

It's nice to see you back on the forum although I'm sorry to see things have not got off to the best of starts this year.

I just wanted to wish you good luck for tomorrow. Hopefully it's good news and things will start picking up for you both soon.

Keep us posted :)

Steph, Cancer Chat Moderator

I told you the world was against us!  I set the alarm on my phone for 7. 15 am. And radio alarm for 7. 30 as back up, this one goes off so loudly I nearly have a heart attack.  Hubby is up in the nigjt coughing badly and I struggle to get back to sleep.  The next thing I know my radio alarm has woken me up.  I leap out of bed wake him up, the heating hasn't come on, so another problem to sort out.  I get washed, back in bedroom and radio presenter tells me it's twenty to seven, It's not you pillock I say, it's  twenty to eight!,  the penny drops somewhere in my tired brain,  heating comes on at 6.30, phone alarm hasn't gone off, I somehow seem to have advanced the alarm clock by one hour!  I've got to stop drinking the vodka before I go to bed!!  I crawl back into bed in my underwear and jumper and by 7.30 it's  groundhog day again.  See you tomorrow. 

It's now 8. 15 am, and we arrive at the surgery, there is black ice everywhere and it is minus 0.5 degrees.   I hang on to hubby,  one leg and black ice don't mix.  I laugh inwardly about my attempts to help.   If he went down I would be like one of those squashed hedgehogs they sell in the garden centres,  I wonder which daughter would claim me for their garden?  He has another chest infection so more medication.   Will this ever end, when will he start to feel better?   We make it home in one piece,  opticians later but time for coffee with Mary, hurrah.  When we get back home a phone call from surgery telling us the lab have not done a full blood count so another sample is required, I think we will just book a room at the doctors and move in, it's got to be easier than this!!  This week has been a long week, I can't believe it was 2017 on Monday, I feel like I've lived a year this week.  See you tomorrow. 

Hi Caz,

Just wanted to say thank you for this thread, you've given me an insight into how my wife and daughter must be feeling, my wife in particular.

Asking her how she feels will elicit the response 'fine' but I can see the physical and mental exhaustion.

And the awareness that any conversation, about anything, inevitably ends up about me, something I'm now consciously trying to avoid.

The caring seems to be much harder than the cancer a lot of the time. And there's little chance to escape from it when people are as caring as you and my wife. And our gratitude, even when expressed, is not enough compensation.

Best Regards

Taff