Found out a few days ago that my husband has pancreatic cancer.  I am trying to stay optimistic until we have seen the oncologist (next week) and started some treatment, but the chances are pretty good that he is dying.  This is a famously bad cancer, and it has already spread.

I'm finding that there are several things that I am having trouble with right now - I am feeling more than a little overwhelmed.

Although he is sober now, and has been for 4 years, I lived with his active drinking and drugging for nearly 20 years.  Even after sobriety, things were not always good - we've had a pretty rocky time of it.  I've gotten rid of a lot of resentment, but I'd be a liar if I said it was all gone. And, he is even now not always an easy man to live with - I find I have to use my alanon skills to stay happy and loving.  So, we've been going on in this way for a while now, I've been kinda waiting for the kids to be grown and out of the house and then do some thinking about whether I really want to work this hard to stay married.  Most of the time we are pretty good, but the deep love I felt for him when we got married has certainly taken some hits. Now this. One good thing about it is that it has clarified my feelings - I find that I really do love him deeply, after all.  So now the near future is full of difficult things - helping him get better, if that is possible, and helping him die the best death he can, if it is not.

My husband - the hard part here will be twofold, I think. First, seeing and sharing his pain, grief and fear. Second, the physical realities of sickness - logistics of nursing him, getting him to treatment (we live a long way from tha big hospital) managing the day to day challenges.

My son - he is finishing his last year of high school, and is getting ready to go off to the city to university in the fall. He's been focusing hard on school, on his marks, on scholarships, earning money - he's already been working as hard as he can . He's not the kind of boy to share his feelings, I really worry about helping him through this.

My daughter - much more emotional, much more volatile. My husband's parents both died last fall, and the kids were very close to their grandmother. There has been a lot of unpleasantness about the wills, and this has led to estrangement from my husband's sister - the only aunt on that side that they know well, and her son, the only cousin anywhere near my kids' age. My own father is very elderly, and has gone downhill badly in the last year - my kids are also very close to him, but 'he' is hardly there anymore.  My daughter is just recently realizing that her brother, the closest person in the world to her, will be leaving home in 6 months. And now she is facing the loss of her father.  She's 15, and her family is disappearing.  Her circle of friends has been going through some major changes this last year or so too, and she does not have the rock solid support there that she could have counted on a few years ago.

A dog and a cat. both of whom have various illnesses that mean they can't go into a kennel, but need someone around to give them their shots and pills twice a day.

A job, full of friends and people I care about, where I am really the only person who knows how to do my job.  If I need to take large chunks of time off, I will leave them seriously in the lurch.

And way down at the bottom of the list, there's me. Full of wildly conflicted feelings - wild with grief and rage one minute, thinking "well, once he's gone I can..." or "I won't have to..." the next.  Everybody looking to me to help them through this.

On the positive side, I have a support system now, better than ever before in my life. My family, my friends, my program.  Everyone in our home is more emotionally and spiritually healthy, thanks to alanon and AA, than we have ever been  in our lives. Money should not be a problem (thank you, Tommy Douglas - Canadians will understand this reference).  My husband has his support sytem too - I will not be expected to be all in all to him.  If I can just take it one day at a time, and remember to take care of myself too, I think it is going to be all right.   Not good, but all right.