Noun: frustration.  Plural Noun: frustrations

1. The feeling of being upset or annoyed as a result of being unable to change or achieve something.

2. The prevention of the progress, success, or fulfilment of something.

 

Frustration is an overwhelming emotion when you are on this particular journey. 

Before the diagnosis you don’t feel especially ill or in pain.  You are going about your busy life at 100 miles an hour and all of a sudden The Cancer waves its waggly finger at you and sniggers ‘oh no you don’t, my little darlin’.

 

Whether you have chemo or surgery first, both will knock the wind from your sails.  You will have gone from feeling fine and fruity to utterly shit and unable to carry out your everyday activities.  Even concentrating on the telly seems like too much effort on some days.  For a previously fit and active person, the frustration is immense.  You feel out of control, and as if all of your choices have been taken away from you; but worse than this is the inability and lack of energy or desire to do the few things that are still open to you.

 

My only advice, having suffered with frustration terribly, would be to ‘do an Elsa’ and let it go.  When you are 4 months into 6 of chemo, still months away from surgery and you feel like you have been ill for ever, with more for ever still to go, letting go is easier said than done.  But when you come to the end of your treatment, it will seem like the whole thing went by in a blur.  So don’t beat yourself up for not being able to do the things you used to do without even thinking.  Let it go.