A - Z Of Breast Cancer: CRYING

Talk about Cry Me A River! Never in my life have I ever cried like this. Can you dehydrate from crying?

I found I shed three types of tears: angry tears, impotent tears, and tears of grief. Grief tears were the worst and the most common. I would wake early (around 4am) and before I had even opened my eyes tears would have stained my pillow. These were silent, shuddering tears choked into my pillow so my son wouldn’t hear me from his room. At other times these grief tears would come over me as I watched him doing his homework or playing with his friends or just sitting in front of the TV and I would have to race from the room. It happened quite a lot at the beginning and when questioned over my red rimmed eyes I said that I had developed hay-fever. I won’t take a genius to see that my grief was simple: cancer could take me away from him.

Finding the time to cry

The impulse to cry can come at anytime but when you have children you control it, and when you are a lone parent like me, you can’t just hand the kids over to daddy and take to your bed with a box of Kleenex. My crying soon found a rhythm of its own. I would cry during school hours and after bedtime. And not just tears, but enormous ear splitting screams of despair. Like the world had come to an end. Once, returning from the morning school run I only made it to the backdoor before sliding to the floor, my arms over my head, screaming out in despair. Luckily the house next to mine was vacant. I was literally roaring. Sometimes I drove the car out into the country where no one could hear me and roared until I thought my throat would bleed. I only ever did this kind of crying when I was on my own; when I was with friends and family my crying, while still prolific, was a much quieter affair. The breast care nurse told me about one woman who cried in the supermarket. She made it sound like Tesco was the woman’s favourite place to weep and all I could think was, Had she no home to go to? Had she no car that she could just drive into oblivion and scream.

To cry or not to cry

I am a great believer in crying and get cross when I hear of people trying to be in control all the time and denying their emotions. Stoics particularly bug me, except for my mother who is the Über-stoic of all time. In her I find it oddly comforting. I think perhaps she has no tear ducts. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a world where people go around telling me how they feel and blubbing all the time, but some occasions are occasions to cry and cancer is one of them. The thing I hate about non criers is that they think they are superior to criers. They see crying as a show of weakness. I however, am of the opinion that the reverse is true. I think non criers are too afraid to visit the emotions that will produce an outpouring of tears and so push these experiences away from them. Criers on the other hand have the courage to ‘feel and deal’ with the emotion and are thus a stronger, healthier bunch of people all together. There you go: permission to cry.

Crying is a good and healthy response to a cancer diagnosis and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. One nurse I met seemed to be of the opinion that all this emotion was pathological. She kept on trying to medicalise (is there such a word?) my emotions... ‘You’re taking this badly’ she kept saying, ‘go and see your GP. To tide you over.’ I couldn’t really see the point in going to my doctor unless it was to have someone different to cry to but I did it anyway. The GP knew why I had been sent and offered me tranquilisers and sleeping tablets and anti-depressants. I am not against medication but this felt like insult to injury. I have regarded that nurse with jaundice ever since, so that when I was admitted to hospital and another nurse said softly to me, ‘It’s important to cry, you know’ I could have kissed her. Honestly, if you can’t cry at a time like this, when can you?

The placebo effect

I told my GP I didn’t think taking tranquilisers wise at this time as they would diminish my ability to deal with stress and could be addictive. Slippery slope. I looked into my neurotic crystal ball and saw myself taking diazepam every time the car wouldn’t start or I ran out of Branflakes. I agreed to a prescription for anti depressants but never actually took the pills. I just kept them in a drawer by my bed for their placebo effect. I reckoned just knowing they were there meant never having to take them. Makes no sense I know, but it worked. Besides I wasn’t depressed. I was sad. Sadness is not an illness; it is a rational response to sorrowful events.

The sleeping tablets were a different matter.
When my GP suggested them I thought of Shakespeare again, Othello this time. I did warn you…
Not poppy, nor mandragora,/Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,/Shall ever medicine (me) to that sweet sleep/which (I) owed’st yesterday.
Seriously, I never knew Shakespeare was thumping around in my head like this, but you’ll be relieved to know that I didn’t actually say this to the doctor. I said thank you and took the prescription. Two weeks into my cancer diagnosis and I was already seriously sleep deprived. I could not keep this up. If I did not get a night’s sleep soon I would go out of my mind. So I took the sleeping tablets but the result was a stinking hangover, monumental migraine and a mouth that felt as though I had been sucking on old socks. It took me a while to figure out that the sleeping tablets were causing all of these symptoms (not the brightest, I know) and so I stopped taking them. I am not suggesting that you should eschew all and any drugs designed to help with your equilibrium. If you need it, take it. You wouldn’t have your teeth out without anaesthetic so why suffer this difficult time unaided, right? I am just saying that for me at that time it wasn’t right. I may feel differently next week or next year.

Crying is part of cancer. Do it, then leave it, but don’t let anyone make you feel that your tears are not valid.

Read more at http://breastcancercares.blogspot.com/