We hide our deepest, darkest fears because we want to protect you. We see the emotional pain this diagnosis causes our loved ones, and we don’t want to be a burden. We often keep the full, terrifying reality of our thoughts private, so we don’t scare you.
You know that we are in treatment, and you imagine how difficult that is. I am sorry to say that you don’t really know, and we don’t share that heaviness with you.
You don’t see the mental battle we fight just to walk into the infusion room. Even driving up to the building can trigger a full-blown panic attack. The noise. The depression all around us. The IV pump. The sad, sick people all around us. The helpless feeling of being hooked up to something that’s supposed to be saving our lives while it destroys parts of us at the same time.
The poison that runs through our bodies. Those toxic chemicals that are so bad that our nurses need to be masked up, gloved up and gowned up because they need protection.
You don’t see the hours we spend with the fear of the unknown.
You don’t see how hard it is to be strong, to be grateful, to be a good patient, when all we really want to do is scream.
And we’re not going to tell you.
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This is number 6 in a series of things caregivers and loved ones really need to hear, even if we don’t always have the courage to say them out loud. The unfiltered truth about what we are going through.
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