Sad Day

I went to a Lodge meeting tonight and my friend who has been having some "awareness" problems of late was in a bad way tonight.  He knows he has something not quite right with himself and that he forgets things and that he can get lost walking to the shops.  And another friend turns up bloated from his drugs which I think are steroid based.  He looks fine but he was so slow and I had to get him and another friend up the stair lift to the meeting and back down again and they were puffing and panting and not quite knowing what was going on.

I suddenly found out that I was taking responsibility for making sure they got up to the room, down from the room and to the dining room and to their wife's cars.  Of course, they are in their 80s and 90s now and I knew them when they were my age!!!!  Oh shit!!

I also had an interesting conversation with Mrs. F. this morning showing her the article I cited yesterday on the blog.  She hadn't realised and wanted to know what she could do and of course, there's nothing she can do, it's out of her hands and in my head. It's an interesting scenario I think.  Now she realises what I'm going through but there's not a lot she can do to change it - the only good thing is that perhaps my behaviour over the last few years may start to make sense.  The huge problem for me is that the cure is pretty nasty and needs me to separate my current life and make a new one.  The issue being that I cannot quite work out whether it is a single or joint effort required.

Oh shit, it's something that suddenly I can't contain anymore but I'm glad she realises that it isn't her - it's ME.  You see the problem doesn't sit with those who are secondary victims of bladder cancer, it sits with the victim themselves - me.  I have changed and that's got to be the case, it's happening to me after all.  For my immediate family, they've had one of their foundations messed around with but they've other things to do and they are busy living their own lives.  I support fully that they should live their own lives and move on and do what they need to do despite what is happening to me.  At the end of the day it makes little difference to them whether I'm there or not and occasionally I may have some input.  

Anyway, the sadness is that people I knew some time ago who were my age are now infirm and strange things happened like they lost their cases or didn't know how to operate things, I had to get them up and down the stair lift and these are people whom I respect dearly and there I am acting as nurse to them where a year ago they were fully able to get up and down the stairs on their own etc.

Suddenly it brought it all home I have to say.