I need to unload.

[Andrea]

I feel a little selfish posting this when I read so many stories of people going through terrible amounts of suffering but I need someone to unload onto and this seems to be the only place I can find to do it. My story is that my eldest daughter was diagnosed with a stage three brain tumor last July. She had been suffering from headaches for about 9 months to a year before and I, being me (the you'll be right kind) kept just saying to her "take some panadol". Of course this didn't help. She had a CT scan done in March which came back normal (it was done in b/w, not contrast and the tumor was missed) then she had a fit on a Sunday morning in July and was unconscious. The ambulance took her to hospital where she came to about 30 minutes later. A CT in the emergency ward showed the tumor. Since then she has had surgery, radiotherapy and chemo. She has two more weeks of follow up chemo to go and then we start the wait to see if it returns. She has been amazing, she suffers from varying amounts of anxiety and depression at times which is to be expected but no matter how bad she is feeling she won't let her friends and family (except me, thank goodness) know how bad it is for her because she doesn't want to upset them. She has told me that she doesn't want the chemo to end because while she is having it the cancer really can't grow back. My problem is that I can't appear to be in any way not positive to her for her sake but I am terrified of losing her. Looking up her prognosis on the internet is only depressing (but who can trust the internet I say) and her doctors won't give us anything except "the longer you go without anything showing up on the MRI the better", which from what I have read here is pretty standard. She is also a member of this site so she may just read this. I have already lost a child seven years ago (he drowned in a dam at my parents house on fathers day when he was 18 months old) and now we have to deal with this, I want to say "ITS NOT FAIR!!" but after reading other peoples stories, life hasn't been fair to any of us! I know that I will cope, lets face it, you have too but really sometimes I wonder where that strength will come from. Anyway, enough! Like I said at the start, I needed to unload and don't have anyone to talk to. My family have been wonderful but my dad is a worrier to point of anxiety attacks so I can't talk to parents, friends are great too but all have there own problems too deal with (real, not imagined) so I don't want to burden them. That leaves me you guys, you lucky things! I just want to finish with - I love my three girls so much and can't imagine life without any of them. I lost my boy, surely thats enough! Thanks for listening.