Reader dilemma: 'My mother has been in a deep depression since being given the all clear from cancer'

Advice: 'Your mother has been battling to keep alive, and now she is, she’s wondering where she’s going next?'

'She has braved it all with stoicism and made friends with the nurses – even giving comfort to other sufferers' (Getty Images)

Dear Virginia

For the past 18 months I’ve supported my mother – a widow – through very unpleasant operations and chemotherapy. She has had to go back and forth to the hospital and has felt very rough for a lot of the time. She has braved it all with stoicism and made friends with the nurses – even giving comfort to other sufferers who haven’t coped nearly as well. But a month ago she was given the all clear and since then she has been in a deep depression, crying all the time. Is it a delayed reaction? I don’t know what to do.

Yours sincerely, Hattie

Virginia says

This is the bit they don’t always tell you about cancer treatment. But it is an extremely common reaction. Only the other day, I had a tearful call from someone who’d had terrible ovarian cancer. Fearing the worst, I held my breath – but no. She told she’d been given the all clear and she was miserable.

Of course, you’re right. There is a big element of delayed reaction. Your mother has been battling so long to keep alive, and now she is alive, she’s wondering where she’s going next? Everyone is trying to tell her that, having been spared death, her life is now extra precious. Well, frankly, no. It’s just the same as it always was, except that your poor mother is not only exhausted from the chemotherapy – which can take a terrible toll for months and months, not only on the body but the mind as well – but she’s probably living in constant anxiety about whether the wretched disease will return. No longer can she take life for granted. Every spot, every bump she finds fills her with panic.

Not only that, but even people who have been kept in dreadful conditions, kidnapped, say, suffering pain and humiliation for years, can feel very ambivalent about being free. We’ve all heard of people who can no longer sleep on a comfortable mattress after they’ve been freed from a barren cell, and have to bed down on concrete to get a good night’s sleep. Your mother’s become practically institutionalised. Her life has been entirely made up of injections, scans, blood tests, check-ups and, for her, the hospital has become a second home.

Now she’s back and she’s lost everything – the role she played in comforting other patients, the nurses she loved. And the friendships she left behind will have changed, too. She’s been through a life-changing experience. They haven’t.

One way of helping her through this terrible time (when she’s probably lacking sympathy from friends, who won’t be able to understand why she isn’t singing and dancing) is to be as caring as you already are, and also to find out if there are any Maggie Centres in your area (maggiescentres.org).

They’re set up not just to help people through the terrible stress of cancer, they also run a course for people like your mum, called Where Now? It’s not that easy to be a cancer survivor. Who knows, she may even feel guilty that she’s lived and some of her friends in the wards have died?

If there are no Maggie Centres nearby, she could see a counsellor and, eventually perhaps, sign on to the hospital as a volunteer or join the “Friends”. There are usually groups set up to fundraise and be helpers round the place. That way, she can still be connected.

Your mother isn’t alone, by any means.

Readers say...

The scars are deeper than you know

Having being diagnosed with, and had surgery for, prostate cancer, I was told that all was well. A while later, I found myself very emotional and started suffering flashbacks. My GP recommended counselling and I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The treatment helped me enormously. Like your mother, everyone thought how strong I was, but going through these difficulties seems to leave deeper scars than we are aware of.

Paul

Bedford

Allow her to be in charge of herself

Although I found the insidiousness of the chemotherapy effects extremely difficult to cope with, especially in the latter phases, you hang your hat on the idea that “soon you will be on the other side of the chasm”. Then, you find that you are. But, oh boy, everything has changed in your life. You can no longer just pick up the threads. Your body is wrecked, physically and mentally. Physically, you naively think that with the treatment being finished, you will soon be back to normal. Fourteen weeks on from the finish line, I find that getting back to normal will take another six months at least, and the older you are, the longer it takes.

Mentally, dark clouds descend. For months you have “coped”, put on a brave face, etc. But in recovery, you have time to dwell, to realise your mental as well as physical strength has evaporated. Once again you are on the helter skelter ride for your life, and rebuilding confidence, plus regaining your independence, is very lonely.

Personally, I would like to be able to have access to some professional help on this, as you find your close relationships have changed, too. Friends and partners as well as relations find it difficult to let you out of their sight, and you feel you let them down, as you cannot deal with pressures as before, or you don’t have the stamina that, amazingly, you find relationships demand of you.

Allow the patient to flex their independence. I am amazed to find that, brilliant though it was to have total help, those who help you find different ways to manage your life and home, and you long to return to your old routines. Whether you have the energy is another matter, but you want to be in charge of yourself. It is not ingratitude, it is life force, to survive and control one’s existence.

Jane Combes

Newquay

Next week's dilemma

A dear uncle of ours hasn’t seen his 20-year-old daughter (our cousin) for 16 years. His marriage broke down and his wife took the child to live seven hours away. Visits were made so difficult, he stopped going, to save disappointment. He remains single and gets on with life. We recently found his daughter on Facebook and have encouraged him to contact her. But he’s reluctant, fearing rejection because he thinks he’s “not good enough” for her. Should we send a note via Facebook ourselves to see how the land lies? He’s longed to see her again for 16 years.

Yours sincerely,

Brian and Anne