So Your Wife Has Cancer.
It's a stark, confronting title for a book. It doesn't muck about. And that's the point - its author wants men facing possibly the greatest challenge of their life to sit up and take notice.
Canberra education expert James Gutteridge wrote So Your Wife Has Cancer: The Man's Ultimate Guide for How to Cope and What to Do after his wife Natasha died in 2017 aged just 31. She had battled terminal colorectal cancer for almost four years, taking her final breath at Clare Holland House. James, himself, was only 29.
During those almost four years, James admits he struggled in this new role as a husband carer. He was rarely offered help or even a warning about how difficult the caring journey would be. James learnt the hard way how to become the husband and carer Natasha needed him to be.
So in the wake of her death and in the midst of his grief, he wrote the book he wished he had been able to read, to be better to himself and to Natasha.
Now aged 34 and married to his second wife Lisa Qin, the couple settled in Lawson, James wanted to target men in the book. He said research showed his struggle was common, especially for husbands. They often didn't know how to be carers. They often walked away. [There is a 21 per cent greater risk of divorce if a female partner is seriously ill versus male partner] They didn't know how to ask for help when they were struggling. They just wanted to fix what was sometimes simply not fixable.
James, during his own battles to support his wife, became depressed, anxious and even suicidal trying to wrestle with not only facing the momentous life and death struggle but in the minutiae of the everyday decisions, feeling like he was "making thousands of mistakes along the way".
"Men like to solve problems and there's nothing you can fix in this situation," he said.
"I couldn't even communicate how I was feeling to Natasha. I wanted to protect my wife and I didn't want to burden her.
"I bottled everything up until my body couldn't cope anymore. I felt very much alone.
"One of the things with the book is, I want people to realise they are not alone. Even if it is just me walking with them and giving them the resources and the confidence they need."
Dr Hilde Kleiven, a Canberra Hospital oncologist, provided the cover review for the book, describing it as "powerful, confronting, honest".
"I wish I could prescribe this book to all my female patients' husbands," Dr Kleiven wrote.
Natasha had been diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer which later spread to her lungs, bones and brain. She was originally from the Philippines so she and James returned there for two years to be closer to her family. When her mother was posted to Canberra as the ambassador to Australia, the couple also settled in the national capital.
His story is not without hope. He spoke up and asked for help.
"By the end, I had learned to open up," he said.
"And I had brilliant psychologists and psychiatrists here in Canberra who helped me to understand what I was going through and then gave me the tools to communicate that with Natasha. We even got marriage counselling to help us both understand what each other was going through and how to communicate.
"Our last year of marriage was probably the strongest in the 11 years we'd been together because we learned how to communicate, how to care for each other and care for ourselves.
"So in what can seem a very hopeless situation, I want people to see there is hope. There is hope for our relationship, there is hope for our family in how you can grow as a man, as a husband, as a father, as an employee.
"I feel very strongly if you can go through this, you can go through anything."
- So Your Wife Has Cancer: The Man's Ultimate Guide For How To Cope And What To Do by James Gutteridge, Inspired Publishing. See more at https://soyourwifehascancer.com/
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