proud but a little upset.

[loopyloo]

So proud, my son has just appeared on the local news due to him carrying the olympic torch in June and even if I do say so myself he did us all proud. My head is so big at the moment.

There was one thing that put a bit of a dampner on it all. When asked if I would go on camera I refused (it would have given half the viewers nightmares if I would have appeared : ) I never spoke about me having had lung cancer and my son was very careful about it too, for the simple reason I didn't tell everybody about it. At first when I found out I kept it between myself and the medical staff and I kept up the pretence that I just had a cyst on my lung that needed to be removed. When my GP finally talked me into telling my family & friends I still only revealed the truth to very few close people. On the report tonight it mentioned that 'I had battled cancer,' and I don't know how they came about that info, plus I would not say it was a battle because I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I now have to face those I did not tell and I don't know how to explain why I didn't tell them. Sorry to be a moaner but this is the only place where I feel people will understand where I am coming from.

[Billculbard]

Hi there. You're quite right to be proud of your son carrying the torch - we'd all love to have that to remember.

As for not having told many people about your cancer, that's a personal thing and you're quite entitled to keep it that way. You wouldn't necessarily go about telling everyone you had a kidney problem or a dodgy liver, so why should you have told them about cancer?

Now that they know, there's no need for you to feel bad about not having told them - even good friends. You just tell them it was something you wanted to keep to yourself and didn't want to burden anyone else with your problems - or words to that effect.

There's always someone who wants to broadcast something which they really shouldn't, so I wouldn't bother too much about it. As for 'battling' cancer, I quite agree that it's not a good description but again, don't worry yourself about it, as the press have a bad habit of attaching their own descriptions to these things.

Love Bill x

[loopyloo in reply to Billculbard]

Thank-you Bill,

I think what made me more adamant not to tell people was when my son was a few months old i had a stroke which left me with a sight problem. At first I also had a rightsided weakness but a few months down the line that gradually got better but my sight didn't improve. looking at me nobody would suspect that I was partially sighted but I felt when friends\family introduced me to anyone they would say this is Wendy, she's partially sighted and it made me feel that the stroke was me and I became part of the stroke (if that makes sense). I didn't want that to happen when I discovered I had lung cancer, plus I felt some of my family and friends had enough to deal with in their own lives without fretting about me.

I guess thats why I like this site, we can talk about our worries, and our experiences without becoming totally engulfed.

Thanks Bill for helping me to look at this event in a different light, the focus is my son and his achievements and me being a VERY proud mum.

Big Hugs xx