To cut a very long story short, my DH (70) was taken in to hospital yesterday and found to have a brain tumour. He had lymphoma previously and just got the two years all clear. We don't yet know what the tumour is.
More detail: we have a shared extended-family holiday cottage in a rural, coastal part of the country. DH drove up to overlap with his brother and family in the middle of last week. When DS (19) and I arrived by train yesterday, we got in an argument about something DH had forgotten to do, and then DS asked him if he was OK and he blurted out that he had been worrying for a week about something that happened last weekend - he had woken up with bits of memory missing. He told no-one, and drove a long way by himself. This after all of the saga with the lymphoma, and numerous subsequent health episodes and scares. I can't understand why he would do this. As soon as he told me I called the NHS 111 number and they sent an ambulance to check him out. They thought he had not had a stroke - my main worry - but decided to take him to the hospital A and E to be checked out as he was worrying about forgetting things like the names of medication he was taking. Once there we waited hours as they assessed him as not at all serious. They eventually did a CT scan of the head to rule out a lesion - and they found one. They kept him in and put him on steroids and will do scans when they can manage with the skeleton bank holiday staff. They say he should then go home and into large hospital near us. (His response - can't we have our three-week holiday first?).
I am terrified - it could be benign, or the lymphoma back, or another cancer, or a secondary tumour. Clearly the last is worst, but they are all so scary. I am catastrophizing like mad, can't sleep or eat. DS is fairly calm about it and assuming it can be treated, as the lymphoma was. He is about to go off for his first year at Oxford and I am really worried about the effect on him. I just delicately broached the issue of whether he would be ok leaving in the circumstances and he said 'God, yes!', so I think he is feeling fairly robust about it, but we are all very close.
I'm sure this will elicit Mumsnet contempt, but I don't drive (anxiety) and neither does DS (anxiety and dyspraxia). This is not really an issue at home as there are good transport links, but is very hard here, where hospital is a £40 taxi ride away (each way).
Now worrying about tiny irrelevant things like how we will manage the trips to and from uni (in any scenario). To think before yesterday my main worry was empty nest syndrome. Now I am terrified at idea of an even emptier nest, and dreading the long period of everything on hold again. This medical journey was so hard last time and this seems likely to be even harder.
I'm not really angry, I don't think , just uncomprehending at DH's head-in-the-sand attitude. It would all have been so much easier if he had told us a week ago. But then again, we might well not have discovered the tumour at all if it wasn't for this set of events.
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AIBU?
To be angry as well as upset and terrified?
34 replies
SchrodingersKitty · 25/08/2019 11:29
OP posts:
EmeraldShamrock ·
25/08/2019 17:38
I am so sorry to hear about your DH. I hope you get better news soon 
To go off topic to say there really are some fabulous and kind mumnetters about.
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