It's keeping me awake, and my mind is in overdrive. In my lifetime, I've only ever known one family member to have cancer - my grandmother. I was too young at the time to understand fully what was going on, I never asked any questions in case I offended anyone, and I didn't know how to deal with my own emotions, let alone understand how everyone else was feeling at the time. My last memories of her weren't grand, wasting away in a hospital bed. It was all over quite quickly once she was admitted, I remember.
She was in her nineties, and she'd secretly hidden it from us for years that she had lung cancer. My mother found out by accident when she came across a bloodied tissue that my grandma had been coughing into, and hadn't disposed of it properly. When my mother got her to see a GP about it, get scans taken etc, it was terminal and was too late. She passed away weeks later.
I'm 30+ years older now, and my partner's father (recently retired) has informed us that he's been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and they think it has spread to other organs and sounds aggressive - she's at sixes and sevens, doesn't know what to do or say, and leans on me for support. I've only been there once and I didn't know back then what to do exactly, so I'd appreciate a bit of community advice. There's a local support group near us ran by volunteers, and registered as a charity - of which I believe her mother has attended. It's a group of volunteers who themselves have either had cancer or been affected by it at some stage in their own family. It just seems weird, because everyone is walking on eggshells and pretty much scared to talk about it, a hurdle we all need to get over.
I'm posting here as I know there's quite a lot of members frequent the forum, I'm just looking to see if anyone can offer some informal advice from personal experience. I'm considering going to the support group with my partner tomorrow to see what it is they do for you. Any advice?
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