I met someone a few years ago who was very well, and working and living her life. She was a really lively, bubbly, outgoing and kind person. We got to know each other a little during the time we worked together. Five years previously, just a few months married, she'd found a lump in her breast and was quickly diagnosed with cancer in her breast and also her lymph nodes. The doctors said she had a low chance of survival, and she spent the next two years having aggressive surgery, chemo, radiotherapy, the works. She had infections and all sorts, but eventually made a full recovery. She lived with the high chance that the cancer would come back at some point, but when I met her she was well and had been for some time. Her husband left her - moved all his stuff out of the house and just abandoned her - about two months after she was diagnosed. He was living with someone else within six months, while she was undergoing the worst of her treatment. She said she'd found his abandonment - his ability just to compartmentalise what she thought was a happy and secure relationship - more traumatic than her diagnosis, the treatment, the effect it had on her fertility, and then living with the sense that her cancer would almost certainly return at some point. But she also said she'd rather have found out early what sort of man he was, and there would have been no other way to find it out other than going through it. She'd seen the very worst of him and didn't want him. I was in awe of her then (that she hadn't had him murdered, for a start) and though we didn't keep in touch I often think of her. She got a massive critical illness payout on her life insurance, and planned to spend it all travelling. I don't know how she felt when she was alone at three in the morning, but I got the sense she was a really peaceful person determined to enjoy every moment of life. I'm not sure how her exhusband got through the days, having to look at himself in the mirror each morning, but she seemed to be doing fine.
I'm so sorry you're feeling sad, Dilly. Everyone here knows how you feel.
