"The best way out is always through." ~Robert Frost

With feelings of guilt, resentment, anger, sadness, confusion, and loneliness (to name a few) gathering within me, I decided that change was necessary. I needed to get out of this hole I had dug myself into and I needed to do it fast. If I did not, I could be risking my health, jeopradizing the healing process, and leading myself on a pathway to serious depression. I decided that I would make it a point to visit the social worker at the hospital regularly. This would give me a neutral person to talk with about my feelings. My first meeting with him a few weeks earlier also gave me the feeling that he understood where I was coming from because he had dealt with so many cancer patients in the past.

Thus, I made an appointment with the same social worker I had met with briefly a few weeks before and began meeting with him on a weekly basis. At first I went alone and talked about anything and everything that was on my mind. He reassured me that the feelings I was having were perfectly normal. He expressed that many people feel lonely and isolated following treatment and that this is cause for feelings of depression and anxiety. He also spoke with my doctor about the mood swings I was experiencing. My doctor told him that the hormonal therapy I had just begun a couple months earlier was definitely a culprit in this. I now know that one of the major side effects of Tamoxifen, the hormonal therapy I am to be on for 5 years, is mood swings and depression. The side effects caused by Tamoxifen are actually quite similar to the symptoms of menopause (and as most of you probaly know, one of the major symptoms of menopause is severe mood swings).

I felt that being aware of this made me much more able to control it. One of the major lessons I have learned from cancer is that Knowledge is the ultimate power. Knowing that I was not alone, and that was I was experiencing was perfectly normal, also eased the feelings of confusion and helplessness caused by everything I was experiencing mentally and emotionally.

After a few sessions, Mike joined me at a couple of my appointments and we talked together with the social worker about some of the things he was experiencing as one of my major supporters. Having a neutral person to talk to greatly helped us to understand one another and what each of us was experiencing throughout this process.

"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." ~Hecato, Greek philosopher