Hi everyone,
I’m (33f) struggling to cope with how my family acted / behaved during my diagnosis and treatment. I’m looking to see if anyone has been in a similar situation, and how they handled it :happy:.
Has anyone been in a situation where a very close relative got pregnant during your treatment?
In my case it was my sister (32f), to note we were very very close. My treatment course was 6 months and included surgery and chemo. I’m incredibly hurt as I feel this could have waited. I’ve had mixed messages as the whether this was intentional or not. They weren’t ‘trying’ but weren’t using protection, as a miscarriage 3 months earlier made her think she was infertile. This is a difficult pill for me to swallow as she already has a 6yr old son, but I understand that everyone processes things differently.
There are of course other aspects to this story. The time they chose to tell me was probably the most weakest and vulnerable point of my entire treatment. I had just been discharged from hospital, told I couldn’t complete cycle 2 as the chemo drugs were causing too much damage, and would have to start cycle 3 with brand new drugs not knowing if they would be better or worse and what the prognosis would be. The way I was told was also incredibly insensitive ‘this might sting a bit’. I have had explanations for both of these, they didn’t want me to hear the news from anyone else, and they regret how they told me. As you can probably imagine, during this time I was grabbling with my own fertility worries after being told chemo might make me infertile and there wasn’t enough time for fertility preservation (even though I had waited 6 weeks to see the oncologist) and so a (hopefully temporary) medical menopause was my only option.
To get through my treatment I just had to push everyone away as I felt they were causing more harm than help. I know that I can’t tell anyone when or when not to extend their family but upon reviewing other scenarios I’m struggling to find any other examples whereby someone gets pregnant whilst a loved one is battling cancer, and if the roles were reversed, my focus would have been on her. I feel that instead of protecting me whilst I was going through the fight of my life, those I love made it harder, and it was all preventable. I’m angry as the stake on getting these things right was my life, and I feel that the decisions they made had very little regard for this and this has led me to feel completly worthless. I’ve had acknowledgement that they made my journey harder, but no accountability or apology for this.
If anyone has any advice on how to cope / accept / move on from this, that would be great to hear, and if anyone has experienced a similar situation.
Thanks Xx