How possible it is to hide a cancer?

[Tyrion]

I’m a man, 24 years old. I've been using this site for quite a long time now and now I need your help and advice. Not long time ago I found out I’ve a tumor. Unfortunately it’s a malignant one, however, my doctor says I’ve good chances, because it’s discovered on pretty early stage. I have to have a surgery and undergo chemotherapy afterwards. I know there will be big changes in my life, but the thing is that I don’t want my family to know about this.

My family is quite big, it consists of my parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters. We have good relationships and we’re meeting about two times in month. I live separately together with my boyfriend and I really don’t want my relatives to know I’ve cancer. I know my family too damn well. If they’ll find out the truth, they would start to treat me as infant. They would get me in the bed and wouldn’t let me go anywhere. Besides I don’t want them to look at me as if I’m on my deathbed already. Pity is the last thing I need right now. My boyfriend is the only person who knows and I want it to stay that way.

So, I wanted to ask – is it possible to hide my sickness? I always thought it would never touch me, and I haven't met people with cancer before. Do cancer patients look different then other people? I’m at the very beginning of my fight, so I would like to know how much will I change? I know my hair will fall out during the chemotherapy, but that won't be a problem, as I have very short hair right now. Maybe someone could share his/her experience. I would appreciate that very much.

Wow that's a tough one.

Well, my friends mother had breast cancer and no one knew she was sick. She looked fine. That said.. it all depends on how sick you actually are.

I personally would tell you to just tell them, the support could help you.. but that's not really my place. That said I wish you the best and hope you get better ASAP! If I could give you a hug right now I totally would!

[Undreamt]

One of my friends was reciently diagnosed with Hodkins lymphoma, he hasn't started the treatment yet but even then you can tell something is up.

Its better for you to tell them on your terms rather than them find out at the worst possible time.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Well, actually I've not thought about the worst outcome, although, of course, I do realize that I might die. My boyfriend doesn't let me to mention a word about death. If I start to tell him something about death like "If I die, then...", he's just like "you won't" and immediately tries to turn my mind to other things. He doesn't let me to have bad thoughts at all.

About my family, I know it would be better if they wouldn't know. Because I know what would happen if they did. They would call me day and night, my parents would definitely be willing to move in with me and my boyfriend. I would become the weak and helpless invalid boy, who's not able to even go to the toilet without aid. Probably they would even want to put me in the hospital. My mother is so emotional that she would spend her days crying about me. I'm the youngest child in our family and I've already been babied enough. It was a tragedy for them when at 21 I moved out to start to live together with my boyfriend.

If someone of them chose to hide something like this from me, I would seriously understand.

I believe that during the chemo what I'll be needing the most will be peace. I don't want hysterical, crying people around me.

I understand the why behind your BF trying to keep your thoughts happy, however human beings need to explore their own mortality in an environment where they will feel safe about it.

Yes there is a need to keep things upbeat and to give you the will to continue, but not allowing you to discuss or think about the potential here can't be good for you emotionally. You need to be able to process through the emotions that must be there.

Most of the cancer patients I knew did therapy with a therapist to deal with the 'ugly side' of their emotions. I know of couples where the spouse also went to sessions in order to learn how to provide a 'safe environment' for the patient to process through stuff.

And such questions as 'Do I tell the family' ' HOW do I tell the family' and other 'what about everyone else?' type questions are best explored with a therapist.

A therapist will not give you hard answers, instead the therapist will assist you in finding your own answers.

Here is one such site on therapy for cancer patients: http://www.goodtherapy.org/therapy-for-cancer.html

You have a lot on your plate here, and you need time to process through the ramifications and the emotions that such words as malignancy and cancer must have caused in you.

[starbelly]

I’m a man, 24 years old. I've been using this site for quite a long time now and now I need your help and advice. Not long time ago I found out I’ve a tumor. Unfortunately it’s a malignant one, however, my doctor says I’ve good chances, because it’s discovered on pretty early stage. I have to have a surgery and undergo chemotherapy afterwards. I know there will be big changes in my life, but the thing is that I don’t want my family to know about this.

My family is quite big, it consists of my parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters. We have good relationships and we’re meeting about two times in month. I live separately together with my boyfriend and I really don’t want my relatives to know I’ve cancer. I know my family too damn well. If they’ll find out the truth, they would start to treat me as infant. They would get me in the bed and wouldn’t let me go anywhere. Besides I don’t want them to look at me as if I’m on my deathbed already. Pity is the last thing I need right now. My boyfriend is the only person who knows and I want it to stay that way.

So, I wanted to ask – is it possible to hide my sickness? I always thought it would never touch me, and I haven't met people with cancer before. Do cancer patients look different then other people? I’m at the very beginning of my fight, so I would like to know how much will I change? I know my hair will fall out during the chemotherapy, but that won't be a problem, as I have very short hair right now. Maybe someone could share his/her experience. I would appreciate that very much.

Oh man, this is tough. Yours is probably tougher than mine was.

I had thyroid cancer, and it was quite frankly the worst thing I think I've ever lived through. Luckily for me, thyroid cancer is highly treatable, but unfortunately, mine was very advanced, so it was more of a struggle than it tends to be for most people. It required two surgeries and I almost lost my voice box because of it. I also almost died in ICU after my first surgery because I stopped breathing on multiple occasions. But I'm still here two years later and I'm kickin'.

What kind of cancer is it, if you don't mind me asking? Aside from chemo, the prospect of surgery to remove tumors is another issue in having to hide it if that comes into play. In my circumstances, my family knew immediately what was going on anyway, but the surgeries left a 12-inch long scar on my neck that would have been impossible for me to hide from them. Thyroid cancer isn't treated with normal radiation or chemo, but rather a radioactive iodine which doesn't have the side effects of hair loss and nausea and whatnot, so I'm not familiar with that on a personal level— I was basically quarantined in the hospital when I had the radioactive iodine therapy, where I sat in a hospital room covered in plastic and watched television for three days.

Basically when my diagnosis happened, my parents met me at the hospital when I went to get biopsy results because they knew I had been seeing several doctors about a mysterious lump in my neck that had been there for at least a year and hadn't gone away. I had been shuffled through doctors trying to figure out what was going on with me, and it had been going on for a couple of months then. I intuitively knew that I had cancer and I had told my mom even before my diagnosis that I did, and she didn't want to believe it. I have a neurotic mother as it is and the entire ordeal really screwed her up (she's still not over it, and I was diagnosed two years ago), so I understand you not wanting to let them know if you don't have to, because it can potentially make the situation more stressful. My dad fortunately is levelheaded, but my mom, bless her heart, is nutty as hell, and was hysterical throughout the entire thing. With my family, the issue was that my mother—inadvertently or not— turned the entire ordeal into a situation for her to receive sympathy, when it was MY body that was going through all of it— all of the constant bloodwork, phone calls, CT scans, body scans, radiation, hospital stays, medications, etc, etc. It became a pity party for her because she was the one person in the family who blew it up into such a big thing. I did my best to downplay it and not call too much attention to it, but she did the opposite, and I resented her for that because it wasn't her illness to own, and I didn't want to own it either.

The rest of my family dealt fairly well with it. My sister-in-law cried about it, and I'm not sure about my brother— if he was upset, he didn't show it in front of me. My dad was pretty stoic and supportive, which I appreciated, even though I know it scared him. My stepbrother was at one point afraid to see me, which I to this day don't quite understand. As someone who went through this sort of thing under the microscopic lens of my family though, I can sympathize with you wanting to keep it a secret. Trust me, you'll feel enough like a lab study, and having your parents, friends, or family members constantly hovering over you makes it even more frustrating at times. I told my close friends shortly after I got diagnosed, but the word spread around and I started running into people I knew who were like "Oh my god, I heard what's going on, do you need anything?" and all of that. I remember one particular instance where I ran into one of my old friend's younger brothers at a restaurant, and he was telling me how shocked he was when he heard I'd gotten thyroid cancer, and then proceeded to tell me how his grandmother had died from it. Not what I really wanted to hear. The fact is that people treat you weirdly when they find out, and it becomes a topic of conversation whether you like or not. Part of it I think is because they don't know exactly how to respond to it. When you've still got it, you're treated like a victim, and then when you overcome it, you're championed like a hero. I didn't feel comfortable in either of those roles. For me, it was more of simply dealing with what was happening to me, and that was it. I shut off my emotions and went into "take care of business" mode.

Like I said, I don't know what chemo is like, but I do know how exhausting it all is, mentally and physically. After I had my thyroid and several tumors removed, my doctors kept me off of thyroid replacement hormones for three months prior to my radiation, and I wilted like a cut flower. My metabolism basically stopped and I gained like forty pounds (which I've lost since, thank GOD). Then I had to go on this extreme diet where I couldn't eat basically anything that potentially had iodine in it (I had to deplete my body of iodine so that the RAI therapy would be effective), and that made me even weaker. It was so awful I could barely get out of bed because I had so little energy. Taking a shower was exhausting, and my mind was foggy and I barely knew who I was. Every minute that I wasn't at work, I was lying in bed, literally. I took care of myself throughout all of it, aside from the two weeks I spent with my mother immediately after both of my surgeries (first to remove the thyroid and multiple tumors, the second to remove more cancer tissue the following year). I did drop out of school though for a year because of it. It would've been impossible for me to have taken classes, let alone focus on the work what with weekly doctor's appointments and all the craziness that comes with cancer.

It's a complicated thing. It ultimately is up to you WHEN to tell your parents, or IF, at this point in time, in my opinion. They are going to find out at some point either way— i.e., yeah, it could progressively kill you (though it's unlikely since you've caught it early), or you'll get over it and then have to tell them afterward. Depending on how perceptive they are, they will more than likely be able to tell if you see one another a few times per month. You said that you know your family "too damn well", which means they also probably know you just as much, and they're going to notice things. With what I had, I was constantly exhausted, pale, brain foggy, gained weight. I can't imagine my family wouldn't have noticed anything was up. I can sympathize with your not wanting too much attention or pity, but it is also on the flip side nice to have the support when things get gnarly.

Regardless of which type of cancer this is that you're speaking of, I'd most of all urge you to prepare yourself for some serious life changes. You're going to have a seemingly endless string of doctor's appointments, you're going to feel like shit, people who know what you're going through ARE gonna treat you differently whether you like it or not, and you're probably going to be scared. It fucking sucks and it's not fair, but keep your head up and lean on your boyfriend for support (and family, if you end up choosing to tell them at this point). It's a really personal thing in the sense that it's happening to your body, but there will probably come a point where you're going to want your family for some sort of support, even if just to talk to them. This also might be stupid and I don't even know if it applies to you, but if you have some sort of religious faith, that's also a way to support yourself through things like this. I'm a Buddhist and sticking with my practice no doubt kept me sane through all of that shit. If you wanna talk at all, feel free to send me a PM on here.

[driftwood]

I
I have to have a surgery and undergo chemotherapy afterwards.
.

I'm taking some entirely different approaches to your question, so keep in mind that I'm questioning - I don't have answers, I'm only suggesting some different ways of looking at things.

First, your statement "I have to have a surgery..." implies that you never questioned mainstream medicine's prognosis. I'm sure their diagnosis is accurate, but you have the option of choosing the treatment that YOU feel is best for you. The statistics for those who follow mainstream medicine's recommendations are not really all that encouraging. My girlfriend has cancer and to some degree she has had more success with coffee enemas than with the prescribed treatment - although she actually needed a combination of both - in combination with juicing and other dietary changes. In your case it's quite possible that the surgery is necessary, but the chemotherapy is not (in her case that was an option that she ruled out from the start).

Secondly, someone once said "Family is like a poker hand; you don't get to pick your cards, but you don 't need to stick with what you got." The first time I heard this, I thought it was repulsive, but on re-examination, your situation may call for this kind of approach. You do need caring people (and not just your BF, but more than one) around you, caring people who have something positive to offer. There's a lot they would be able to do, only beginning with exploring alternative therapies. I can't tell you where to find such friends to gather around you, but that's what you need - maybe you and your boyfriend could brainstorm on how to find and get in touch with them.

Thirdly, you are under no obligation to bring your family into this or any other part of your life in which you feel they would cause problems, rather than be helpful. This is another somewhat unpleasant fact of life, but most of us have parts of our lives that we have decided (for WHATEVER reason) to keep private.

Sometimes it helps to shake things up just enough to change all the assumptions, and then take another look to see what's left.

~q

[starbelly]

I'm taking some entirely different approaches to your question, so keep in mind that I'm questioning - I don't have answers, I'm only suggesting some different ways of looking at things.

First, your statement "I have to have a surgery..." implies that you never questioned mainstream medicine's prognosis. I'm sure their diagnosis is accurate, but you have the option of choosing the treatment that YOU feel is best for you. The statistics for those who follow mainstream medicine's recommendations are not really all that encouraging. My girlfriend has cancer and to some degree she has had more success with coffee enemas than with the prescribed treatment - although she actually needed a combination of both - in combination with juicing and other dietary changes. In your case it's quite possible that the surgery is necessary, but the chemotherapy is not (in her case that was an option that she ruled out from the start).

I would second this to some extent, although I've personally known people who have had life threatening illnesses that chose alternative medicine routes and they didn't fare any better. It's totally a matter of circumstances and what is unique to your body and what the problem is. I couldn't find any alternative therapies in my case that outweighed what is typically done for the type of cancer I had, so I pursued what my doctors had laid out. I guess I missed in your post you saying that you were having surgery, but in that case, knowing the type of cancer would give me (and everyone else) more perspective, if you're willing to say so (and if not, that's totally fine).

For me, surgery was necessary. I had one huge tumor with multiple other tumors that had spread through the lymph nodes in my neck, and kind of formed a chain of cancer tissue, and it was encroaching on my voice box (the surgeon told me afterward that it was .5mm away from invading my voice box). And, as I said, I had the radioactive iodine therapy afterward, as thyroid cancer doesn't respond to chemo or standard radiation. Surgical removal of tumors is also sometimes necessary for the sake of taking pressure off of other organs and whatnot, depending where the tumor is located.

Best wishes, regardless of how you're approaching all of this.