No personal contact with friends, no hug, but a lot of fear: Brigitte Faßmann has difficult months behind her and a new freedom ahead of her.
by Antje Schmidt
When Brigitte Faßmann had to go to the hospital in June last year, she was there on her own. Nobody was allowed to visit them. The diagnosis was cervical cancer. She remembers anxious, lonely days and sleepless nights. Back then, even doctors didn’t know how bad the cancer was. “The doctors said we had to operate on you and we didn’t know how it all turned out,” says the 67-year-old. “Nobody was there, and that is really very difficult. That was the worst thing that I was alone in this hospital.”
After the therapies came the emotional hole
The operation was followed by chemotherapy and radiation. Brigitte Fassmann bravely got through everything. In October the therapies were over and after that she fell into a deep hole. “There was the big question: What do I do now with my soul, with my fears? How do I deal with the future, how can I best get it to be good for me and also fulfilled?” Describes the former Head of a day care center, her state of mind in those days. The lockdown acted like an accelerator in this situation. Going for a stroll through the city, indulging in something nice, going to the sport, meeting friends, being hugged – all of that fell away due to the corona lockdown.
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Conversations against the recurring fear
Instead, the fear returned and became a reliable roommate in her small townhouse, in which she has lived alone since the death of her husband three years ago. In her need, Brigitte Faßmann sought help at the Caritas cancer counseling center in Hanover. There she met Angelika Wilkening-Scheck, who listened carefully to her. She went to counseling with the qualified psychologist twice, then the great lockdown ended the personal contact. From now on everything was only done by phone.
There is resignation among certain people
“That went better than expected,” summarizes the psychologist Wilkening-Scheck after three months of experience. “At first the clients were skeptical, but over the weeks the pressure increased and more and more people got involved in the telephone consultation,” she reports. Nevertheless, the psychologist observes that resignation is now taking hold. Especially with people who only have a short life expectancy.
The hope for a new freedom after the lockdown
The telephone conversations with the psychologist also gave Brigitte Faßmann new courage. “The conversations are very intense and afterwards I’m totally exhausted,” she says. “But without these conversations, I don’t know how I would have made it through this winter.” Faßmann is looking forward to the time after Corona, to the new freedom. Nine months after the operation she is cancer-free and the fears are less.
