@colleenyoung. I don’t think I do such a great job of taking care of emotional health. Getting a Stage 4 diagnosis threw me for a loop. We don’t have much in the line of friends since moving here and our 2 good friends moved to KY and the other set are moving to TN in Jan. My husband is the best and we have 3 sons who call almost daily. They are terribly supportive. My parents live a few blocks from us and they Molly sit when we go to Mayo but at 88 and 89, they need more help than they are able to give. I walk on the beach a lot, read and am doing acupuncture which is hopefully going to prevent more neuropathy with this round of chemos and immunotherapy along with relaxing me and all that hoopla which I can’t say I’m convinced of yet. My husband is insistent that I give it a fair shot. Medicare and the supplement won’t pay for it and nothing at Mayo Clinic is cheap so I stress over that too.
When I got cancer the first time, we hired a housekeeping service. I am going to go as long as possible without doing that this time because all I did was see what they didn’t do. My strategy is to accomplish 10 things a day and I keep a list of what I have done...I love lists! They don’t have to be big things and honestly I’m finding that my house is cleaner than it has been in a long time because 70 things a week is a LOT and doing 10 things a day keeps me just busy enough for a few hours (or minutes when I’m doing quick things on Mayo days as we live 1 1/2 hrs away). Last time, my husband took over grocery shopping and a lot of the cooking. He found that he enjoyed it and frankly after 48 years of doing it at that time, I was thrilled for him to do it. He’s pretty much continued that to my delight. After doing it for 3 years, he’s figured out what is likely to end up in the trash and does a better job now.
But the bottom line is that stage 4 triple negative breast cancer has a pretty grim prognosis. My oncologist was quite honest when I asked. I was hoping that she and Dr. Google would have different answers. I’m a big believe in quality over quantity and I don’t want my husband to end up an invalid from overdoing trying to take care of me. We’ve taken care of everything legally and are as sure as we can be that won’t be an issue. My husband refuses to discuss hospice or other end of life issues so we’ll just have to deal with it when the time comes.