Liz - It is not at all unusual to feel totally useless and not valued. As CG to my son I felt that often. The "processed crap" that Rob took to work was probably his way of being in control and his way of coping or just something that he felt he could tolerate. At least he took that. And going to work is amazing! My son just started a full time job 3 weeks ago (almost 3 months post Tx) and told me he realizes that not being able to find a job before now was actually a blessing since he couldn't have been able to handle a work schedule any sooner. I made all kinds of nutritious soups and casseroles (and I am a good cook) but what my son ended up getting the most out of was the canned Campbell's chicken noodle soup. I felt replaced by a can of soup but I did manage to say "Wow! you ate 3 whole noodles this time. Maybe tomorrow you will be able to eat 6 noodles with the broth!" The next time Robin says "that ___was good love" hang on to that, jump up and down and yell "hurray"! When I found something helpful that could apply to my son's treatment on the OCF site, I would print out copies for my son to read so that it wasn't just me telling him what to do and I was overjoyed when he said something like "Well, that does make sense". Fighting and surviving cancer is a really rough road and so difficult for a CG to know when to back off or when to be firm but we can get through it and there are small successes along the way that we can celebrate. Celebrations are definitely better than war zones.