What a lovely and touching post, Tonya.

Michael, My prayers and best wishes are with you as you begin your treatment through surgery. I will especially be thinking of you Wednesday. I do hope Seth comes here and finds support in his role as caregiver but I also need to say, from personal experience, that your energy can't be spent worrying about how he will get through it because you will eed to be taking care of yourself too much.

As a cancer survivor friend of mine told me when I was recently diagnosed and worrying about how my husband would cope, if there ever was a time to make it all about you, not him, this is the time. Seth will find his own way through and it may not be the way you would like to see him take but you have yourself to take care of first, here, and you can't control how he gets through it.

My husband, for example, did register for and has visited this site, but only once way back at the point when I had first found it and was pestering him to come here because it was obvious he was struggling with some of the caretaker role issues. There are also two caretaker support groups in town he could have tried to join and though he amde a lot of noise about going to a meeting he never has. As things have moved along, I have found that I have to actually defend myself against some of his stuff related to what is happening at times, because he doesn't want to look too closely at how this is affecting him (he prefers to beleive he can sail peacefully throughthis without being affected at all, ven when it is obvious he is)and so things like frustration and anger tend to come out sideways sometimes through inappropriate reactions to my treatment or innappropriate demands on me. Thank God I found a cancer therpist who has also done some couples counseling with us a couple of times when things have gotten bad in the past couple of months because this has been a real challenge for our relationship (and we had a great relationship with very low levels of conflict before this).

I believe, though, that it will deepen our relationship eventually but only because I now see some things we need to work on that I didn't see before when life was easy. On the other hand, because my main energy has gone to coping with, and now recovering from, my treatments, very often I've had to say to myself "Oh. I never saw that in him before" and just move on as best as I can AROUND it. Well, learning to do that may be a skill I needed to learn too.

Anyway, you and Michael and the rest of your family are in my prayers. This is somehting that will shake up the world of everyone who loves you too, no question, but just rememer you cannot necessarilly help them through it all at times. You just need to take care of yourself, as Tonya's lovely post about her brother indicates he is doing right through his last days.

nelie