Hi Smeggles It is hard to know what to say when you are copping it from all angles. I don't know if your husband was verbally aggressive before his diagnosis or if his personality change has been since then? Please keep visiting this site, as I've found it essential to my mental health and greatly helps to reduce your feeling of isolation. From reading other's experiences, a lot of people have a personality change (which is completely understandable given the traumatic issues they have to deal with plus large amount of drugs and/or chemo toxins in their body). My mother in law who has terminal lung cancer (and not a smoker) was not a nice person prior to her diagnosis and her disposition improved slightly, however, we are walking on egg shells as her moods are so unpredictable. Your message sounds like your husband is still very much in denial, so bringing in the palliative care team will probably make him explode. We didn't know what to do in the early days and how she would react to different issues that cropped up(diagnosed xmas last year) . I don't know if if was the right way to go about it or not, but we scoped out / 'researched' things on our own before bringing them up with her. She has a little bit of medical knowledge from being a vet's receptionist, so you can imagine how that goes. We talked on the phone to the cancer council a fair bit, who were very helpful, plus talking to the staff at the oncology unit. We also rang the palliative care team (the onco unit should be able to give you the contact details if you don't know how to get in touch) at Clare Holland House and went down to talk to someone. At first he was very dismissive of our concerns and sounding very bored, until we'd told him that yes, she had a referral to pal care but had kept cancelling the appointment as she felt she wasn't ready.... yet had had a couple of hospital stays. Another hospital stay in the interim was the turning point for her - an oncology social worker turned up and surprisingly she was very receptive to this beautiful lady - taking most things on board and we felt we were now able to broach the sensitive issues. Pal care have been on board for a few months now and the nurses and doc are absolutely wonderful - when she's on the syringe driver during treatments they pop out every day and she's been queue jumped at emergency since then, so she very much appreciates their help now. She went back to her home last week and insisted she was fine to live on her own.... we didn't feel we could stop her doing this and have as many support mechanisms in place as possible in case something happens. We think she can feel in herself that her independence will be shortlived (she has bony mets in her right hip and left shoulder) so at some stage she'll be back with us or into the hospice. Sorry to rabbit on about my probs, which are quite small now compared to what you're going through. I felt (and still feel) like I'm being pulled in so many directions trying to be everything to everyone and failing miserably. My husband is a contractor and doesn't have any leave left, so I've used up some of my sick leave while she was us having treatment. I did it more for him so he didn't have to worry about getting her to and from treatment etc, but she has 'nasty' days and is very unpleasant to be around, so feeling like 'what's the point'?. One thing everyone keeps telling us is not to take things personally and ignore any nasty things that are said as they are most likely coming from being in pain/discomfort.. however, it's still very hard to take it on the chin. I've found the palliative care staff to be more understanding and supportive of the emotional side of cancer than normal onco staff - please talk to the folks on the cancer council helpline or the pal care mob in your area. Thinking of you and please feel free to email if you feel like venting. My first few posts on here were a rambling mess of rants and raves while I was trying to cope with everything. Take care Zoe
