Posted by mair on October 4, 2006, at 22:24:12
In reply to Re: My T has breast cancer » mair, posted by Dinah on October 3, 2006, at 16:17:34
Gee Dinah, I wish I'd had you in the room with me when i met with my T again yesterday.
I think your T is right about the value of the Babbles in this instance. And having everyone be horrified was helpful, because it did sort of validate my horror. Beyond that, it gave me an outlet. My T has been working with me alot lately about sharing my emotional reactions. But my emotional reaction to her news fell into a different category and while there are some things about her illness that I can see myself discussing, there are others that I cannot. And after posting about this a few times, I realized that I was getting way ahead of myself in terms of my fears (I had pretty much already killed her off). So by the time of my session yesterday, I had calmed down considerably.
My session yesterday was strange - we really didn't talk about much other than her illness, but we sort of jumped all over the place (she was doing more jumping than me) and really I don't have this sense that I talked much at all. She took the edge right off by telling me that the biopsy of the second mass had turned up negative, so she was still on schedule just to have a lumpectomy (tomorrow actually), and her surgeon felt very positive about things. I was able to talk to her about one of my fears - namely that hanging around a bunch of depressed patients was going to make it more difficult for her to maintain the positive outlook that I think is important for cancer patients. But some of my other fears, really just seemed premature and I didn't feel that I wanted, or needed to bring them up yet.
I left there thinking that as much as she knew she should help her patients process her illness, she was still doing alot of processing herself, which is certainly understandable, and is really fine with me.
There is one issue which was just touched on that I really want to come back to when she starts up again - there seems to be this opinion among Ts that the patient shouldn't be worried about the T. This came up in the context of her decision about what to tell her patients and when to tell them.(I'm shortcutting here alot) I see nothing wrong with that - we invest so much in this relationship - if she wants me to reach the level of intimacy where I'm much more comfortable reaching out to her, then she can't totally insulate me from what may be going on with her.
Anyway, a topic for another day.
Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed for another 8 days before i'll find out how things go tomorrow. If the news is good, and the cancer is contained, I wish she'd just get that word out quickly. I hate all of the wondering.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:690264
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060926/msgs/691954.html