Cancer: The Good, The Bad and The Evil

This is going to be an on going post as I'm not sure I can think of all the the good, the bad and the evil things to do with cancer. My initial thoughts are..........

The Good

• The closeness of my family - The illness definitely pulled us all together, we started spending a lot more time together and we still to this day make sure that happens.
  
• The support we all gave each other and the support we felt from people outside the family - Although I've said I found it hard to talk to people I still knew all the people around me were supporting me. I also knew my Dad, his wife and my sister had support from other people. this made me feel better as I didn't feel I was giving them much support.
  
• Our family holiday to the Lake District.
• The things my Dad did whilst in remission, like teaching.
• The first day we went to visit my Dad in hospital - The day we found out about my Dad's illness was the morning after my sister's 18th. My Dad had been ill for a number of weeks prior to my sister's 18th birthday and when the day eventually came he was unable to attend because he had been checked into hospital. The next morning my Mum sat us down and told us everything. We then all went to visit him and because he had not attended the party, which had a film fancy dress theme, my sister and I dressed up in our outfits (my sister - Audrey Hepburn, perfect fit I feel and I was a girl from Grease). It was hilarious as we had to change in the hospital toilets. We also took some of the table decorations so that we could decorate his room just like the party. It made us all feel closer and better about the fact that Dad had not be able to attend.
  

The Bad

• The first day we went to visit my Dad in hospital - Although I just explained that part of this first visit was good, the whole experience was really emotional and scary. Going to the hospital made it all so much more real that Dad was really ill. I also really struggled because I really don't like hospitals, they just fill me with fear and scare me because my automatic thoughts are bad ones, I very rarely think of the good parts to do with hospitals.
  
• My Dad loosing his hair.
• Seeing my Dad suffering because of chemo.
• Seeing my family upset.
• The fears - it was hard to see my Dad suffering and this created a lot of fears for me. I constantly worried about the pain he was and what it was doing to him, I feared that he was going to die when he was first diagnosed, I feared talking to people, I feared seeing him and breaking down. There were so many emotions whirling around in my head and a lot of the time I couldn't make sense of any them.
  

The Evil

• Feeling as if I've done something really wrong and I'm being punished some how.
• Horrible, unsupportive, malicious people - One girl in my high school spread rumours around my year that I had made up my Dad having Cancer to get attention and that I was pathetically jealous of her. At another point a few boys in my R.E class said that my Dad had Cancer because of all the bad things he had done in his life and the illness was God's way of punishing him. It wasn't just students that were unsupportive, I had teachers as well. One teacher was constantly on my back for weeks after my father passed away because I hadn't sat an assessment which was scheduled for the day after he died. On parents evening the teacher brought this up in front of my Mum and even my was shocked at how unsupported I was at school.

I know that some of these are personal and not general about Cancer but they still show the mix of emotions people can go through when a family member is suffering from Cancer.