My wife died of ovarian cancer in February of 2020, right as covid started.
It felt like I was running on adrenaline and cortisol for two years. Scrambling to find anything to help, steadily applying the steel tip of my proverbial boot to the backside of the healthcare industry, doing home IVs, changing ostomy bags, making sure meds were straight, trying to gently urge her to eat something at all, deep diving into the pits and snares of clinical trials, looking at adjunct therapies and arguing with doctors about our right to do those, growing to an ambient, everpresent rage over time.
When she passed, it all went silent, and then the world shut down.
I still feel like my brain has changed. It's difficult to put my finger on how.
In retrospect a lot of the time I spent trying to find options and understand the disease and its treatment would have been much better spent tending to the emotional needs of my family. I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end. I just didn't know how to do it.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Something did change, and i think it’s good you feel that. Someone I used to work with, their wife was a professor at Rochester university and her research was around happiness. She would tell me that our baseline happiness in life is virtually constant (on large timescales, we all have good/bad days etc), there’s not much we can do to alter it in adulthood to shift it. There were a few exceptions, loss of a child, partner or critical illness.
I’m not sure what comes next but really hope that energy and happiness finds its way back to you with time.
>Someone I used to work with, their wife was a professor at Rochester university and her research was around happiness. She would tell me that our baseline happiness in life is virtually constant (on large timescales, we all have good/bad days etc), there’s not much we can do to alter it in adulthood to shift it.
If you're someone who struggles with chronic depression this statement is extremely demoralizing. But it's also hearsay -- you're a stranger on the internet, so you want me to believe based on a stranger's colleague's wife's alleged research, that depression cannot be effectively treated?
If you want to share that researcher's work, provide a link. Keep your rumors, suppositions, and lay-person's doomer psychology to yourself, unless you are planning to make a post with direct citations that is in effect nothing like the comment you did leave.
People's lives depend on this. You can't just post "if you have depression you'll never be able to change it" cavalierly as though you are an expert and your post has no consequences.
Someone is going to read your supposition, your rumor, believe it, and despair.
This is a well known concept called the "Hedonic Treadmill", which exists since the 70ies, not "doomer psychology". It also does not say treating depression is not possible. Depression is a disease.
Fully agree. And even if there was a legitimate study, it wouldn't be dispositive. I had horrible anxiety and depression for most of my adult life. I believed I would never be a happy person, and that I would always be tormented by my mental illness.
I finally found treatment that worked for me in the pandemic (Ketamine assisted psychotherapy), and it was life changing. It has been 2.5 years since I stopped treatment and I'm 10x happier. I wake up every day happy and curious about what the day will bring.
My wife has had anxiety and depression her whole life. I have been carefree and happy all of mine. I've been bullied at school, broke to the point of hunger after college in the 90s, and lost my sister to ovarian cancer 5 years ago. And aside from dealing with "in the moment" problems, my brain is always in freewheeling happy mode. Whereas my wife, no matter how "right" her day went, tens to be negative and beat herself up. It's how we're wired. She did therapy and she thinks that 90% of it is bullshit.
However, in the last few years she said that her "negative voices" (not actually schizophrenia, but her own nagging, disrespectful, negative narration) have gotten under control through CBT. She says it's something she needs to work at daily, though, because her brain seems to be wired that way. And she's controlling it and staying healthy without any meds.
So while I think there's something in that anecdote I don't think it means that you can't have a good life.
The entire point of clinical depression is that it's not environmental, it's intrinsic. Yes, this means it won't change - that's why antidepressants exist. It's why you should see a therapist for it, and should stop listening to people implying you can just eat different or whatever. This knowledge sucks, but you trying to keep that a secret and shaming someone into silence isn't helping.
> The entire point of clinical depression is that it's not environmental, it's intrinsic. Yes, this means it won't change
Wrong. I lost at least a decade of really great years to this belief. It's bullshit. I've made huge strides in my "clinical" depression despite my environment not markedly improving. I did, however, improve myself enough to recognize and stop maladaptive behaviors.
It's hard as hell to change yourself, but you're not immutable.
> I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end. I just didn't know how to do it.
And yet with the other choice you might have regretted "not having done everything you could have". That is the curse of those with the ability to actually do something. In many ways, those who do not understand and simply place their faith in doctors are less burdened.
You did what you thought best at the time; that is all you could have done. Nothing you did or did not do was a mistake.
There are no "right" answers when facing mortality. My sympathies for what you went through, and I hope you are doing better.
》 In many ways, those who do not understand and simply place their faith in doctors are less burdened.
This is so true.
I wish I could write a better response but my wife has her periodic pet-scan in 1hr. Those scan always leave me paralyzed with fear of recurrence of the metastatic breast cancer she has. it's probably off topic so sorry internet strangers but writing it brings a little relief.
Thank you, I appreciate it. The 'doing everything I can' aspect is real. I was only in it for two years and it truly gave me a new perspective for folks that are dealing with similar circumstances over a much longer timespan.
> I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end.
No way. If you had done that you would have felt even worse for not trying everything you possibly could.
+1 to this, my mom died because of COVID in India 1 months after she left US after visiting me, and I still feel guilty that I didnt insist on getting her the vaccine before she left for India, and then at the time of her death India was locked down so no flights and I wasn't even next to her. It's been 4 years but every so often I think about this. I blame myself less now after some therapy, but If you didn't try all that you could you'd probably feel guilty like me.
What I wrote down below is a bit jumbled, but I felt like you describe something I hadn't realized yet. That maybe my brain has changed. And I needed to respond and think about your idea. I hope you are finding a way to deal with it.
This is resonates with me. My father died from cancer a year ago, the bit that survived two treatments was extremely fast moving. I had a business with him, and I spent a year trying to do as much of his job and mine to help him out. But he wanted to work, and I think it was good for him to have forward looking goals.
It feels like every day I am trying to figure out how to make my brain work the way it used to. And almost every day I am trying to decide if we had a bus factor of 1. Fortunately I have family support, and a part time job to keep me busy and bring a bit of money in.
I think about the emotional support and I think we did the best we could have. My dad was clear about listening to the doctors about his options. We spent some time reading about options and researching. But it was clear to all of the immediate family that we lacked the depth of knowledge needed. It was interesting to read about and learn about the techniques. And we were able to get advice from medical family friends. But his team was very good and thoughtful. We also thought the treatments were working. Until a later scan showed a small blip and before we could understand the options and decide he was in the hospital and terminal.
I still feel like I'm moving through the motions of running our business, but not actually doing it. Or something, it is a frustrating feeling that I am trying to fix but maybe I can't. Or maybe it will take years.
It's impossible though. Accepting something like that. If it's your own death I think that maybe you can eventually accept its coming. But if it's your wife? Christ, I'd be searching the earth non stop too.
My sister died of ovarian cancer right at the start of COVID. My big sis, 1 year older. Even though the oncologists said early on that it was extremely aggressive and wasn't responding to treatment, nobody in the family could process it. Oddly, except myself. I live an hour away from them and I think that separation allowed me space to process the inevitable. I tried to be that person who took care of the emotional needs of the family, and my brother in law. But I didn't have a single person to "confide in" because nobody accepted that she was going to die, including her. She had just had a baby a few months before (IVF, and tbh I'm wondering if that process kicked the cancer off). She had to look at her tiny baby and imagine him growing up not knowing her. You could see it in her eyes when she looked at him. Yet she couldn't bring herself to make little recordings, write emails or notes to him for when he's 12 or whatever. That's how much denial she was in - she denied him that sense of what it would be like to have her talk to him.
The first to give up hope was her husband actually. I suppose because he was closest to the front lines, and saw the toll it took on her, the constant downhill. And the dozens of other things that aren't cancer but are part of the depressing array of events like pleural effusion, blood clots, and the digestive system eventually getting blocked off with tumors. When he finally admitted to me that it was terminal, she had less than two months left.
My lovely wife is sitting across the table from me now wondering what "heavy stuff" I'm typing. I couldn't imagine being able to accept losing her.
I hope your life is recovering.
My brother in law met a lovely woman just over a year ago. She has two kids and he had his one. They make a great family unit and she's good for him. Even in practical ways like taking turns bringing the kids to school or sports, covering for him when he had to work late. My family get along with her too. I know it still hurts him to think about what he lost but he's very much a "get on with life" person, so he gets on.
It felt like I was running on adrenaline and cortisol for two years. Scrambling to find anything to help, steadily applying the steel tip of my proverbial boot to the backside of the healthcare industry, doing home IVs, changing ostomy bags, making sure meds were straight, trying to gently urge her to eat something at all, deep diving into the pits and snares of clinical trials, looking at adjunct therapies and arguing with doctors about our right to do those, growing to an ambient, everpresent rage over time.
When she passed, it all went silent, and then the world shut down.
I still feel like my brain has changed. It's difficult to put my finger on how.
In retrospect a lot of the time I spent trying to find options and understand the disease and its treatment would have been much better spent tending to the emotional needs of my family. I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end. I just didn't know how to do it.