Thank you all so much for the nice support and sharing your experience! I doubted before posting this thread thinking it might not be very appropriate in the middle of all the PhD concerns but it is nice to know that there are people who really understand what I'm talking about.

We've been to the doctor yesterday. Scan results are mixed - somewhere shrinkage, somewhere growth, but the growth is less than 25%, which is still considered stable. So they decided to continue the same treatment for the next 5 weeks and see once again. I tried to encourage mom with the hope for better results but there are some worrying symptoms that appeared recently. The only hope is that this drug works slowly and might eventually start its job...

I'm planning to meet my supervisor within the next 1-2 weeks and see what he has to suggest.

Ady, I'm sorry for your loss of your sister. I just hate and curse this disease.

PamW, I can relate to what you mean by "wish I had taken a break". Hope you are doing better now and it was a good decision to seek out a councelor. I don't think you can ever deal with this thing properly from the beginning. It's natural to deny its ugly pictures and to try to maintain a normal life. I also took huge amount of (perhaps unnecessary) load thinking I'm the tough one, untill my body literally refused some day and I had to take 2 weeks off doing nothing. After this break I was able to work again and presented my first Chapter in a seminar with encouraging feedback, this made me keep doing my PhD. But after this I decided not to stress out that much as before. I am too important for my mom to stop functioning, all else can burn.

Crim22, thank you for taking your time to share your experience, it gave me some perspective. It's great to hear that the treatment has worked for your mum and my sincere best wishes for her to stay healthy for the many many years to come and to become a very old lady! It's great that you are close to finishing your PhD. As long as mom stays well, like you, I might keep going and try to come to the finish line with PhD. The only thing is - I'm not able to go as fast and committed as before. Like you said, PhD has been coming with "a back seat to everything else". The scholarship I'm about to receive might be tough on meeting the deadlines with the reports, but will talk about it with my supervisor as well.

Thank you once again! Your replies meant a lot to me.

Wishing you all the best,
Sheyna

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Are there any current or ex-PhD students whose close family member fought cancer during your PhD studies? I am the primary caregiver to my mom with stage 4 breast cancer. She was diagnosed at the time when I started my PhD. It's been quite of a roller coaster, plus I'm pregnant, due in 5-6 months. Now the doctors are saying that a drug has possibly not been working for mom and will tell the final verdict tmrow.

It's been a lot to go through, in between managed to finish the first Chapter of my PhD. Have a good supervisor, won a scholarship for the next year to finish my project but I feel like giving up with my studies now.

I had a mad burnout a couple of years ago, now I feel "drained out" in the same way. Maybe it's better to concentrate on other things - mom and baby? Just don't have any resources left for PhD. Will talk to my supervisor about possibly quitting. TAking some time out and coming back - I don't know, untill that my topic might be already well researched and I will have to start over again with a new idea.

My post is not going to be of much help. Just want to say that I'm feeling exactly like you in the first part re demotivation. Have a presentation coming up in 1.5 weeks and just feel totally drained and nothing more to give. I'm seriously considering to quit PhD after I figure out the source of my burnout. My supervisors are great, always supportive. It's more of a very personal reason that I'm thinking of quitting. My priorities seem to have changed and I want to focus my remaining strength on something different. Just feel like PhD is an unnecessary burden for me I can deal without.

Thank you very much! I was thinking to get back to work after surfing here and work for an hour or two. But I like your advice, sounds reasonable to me:-) That's what I'll do now - shut down PC, take a nice bath and just take a rest.:-)

Hi Leanne,

I'm not even half way through my PhD. Like you, my sister got engaged after me and had her wedding this summer. I kept moving mine for later thinking PhD first.I thought I would finish PhD this year, but now I see it's going to last one more year or two. Now we've started planning our wedding, my partner doing most of it. I don't want to let PhD take over my life. With family I can finish PhD much later or maybe not finish at all, but it will not be the end of world. Everything will be just fine.

You keep reading, working, trying to meet the deadline and at some point - surprise! You can't work anymore - your head is "blocked", you are exhausted, and, especially, when reading a lot, you just physically can't study anymore. However, the deadline is coming up soon and you have to stick to your plan. I may jog tomorrow morning to freshen up a bit, but it may help only for 2-3 hours.

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(sprout)

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Hi FredSmith,

Just wanted to share that I also had to undergo a serious personal life issue during my first 2 years. I thought PhD on top of it was too much and really wanted to quit as I was sure I wouldn't manage being distracted and as you expressed "drained" all the time mentally and physically. I got to a deepest point of nowhere when I realized I need help. I went to the related couselor and just talking out my problem made it all easier. She also gave some advises after which I felt things are not that bad. You know, suffering is subjective and life is much bigger than PhD. You made a good decision to go to a doctor. It will relieve your burden a bit. Also, do you have any good close friend(s) with whom you can share your problem? You need to take care of yourself and make sure you are not alone. For me, fast forward 3 years, I'm still doing PhD and things look OK so far. Of course, it's going slower than 3 years but it's all right. Don't stress about time constraints. You never know, some other opportunities may come up ton continue your studies. Good luck!

Sue and PhDepression (can you change your name?;-)),

Thanks a lot for your replies! You guys are awesome. I remember during Masters the girls I studied with kept wondering why some pretty young PhD students who gave us tutorials were married and had kids so early. Now it seems to makes sense to me, smart guys:-)

Don't know if this tip has already been given or not, but maybe I'll bump it up. I am almost half way through with my PhD. After a 2-3 weeks of scary demotivation and denial, forced myself out back to work and started keeping a PhD Accountability Diary, following the great advises in this forum. It's been 10 days and so far I really like it - you keep track of your progress, keep motivated with everything new each day and SEE your progress, the latter significantly reduces anxiety issue.

Thank you, Sue! Wish you a smooth enjoyable writing.:-) I know it might be hard at the beginning, but as you go, you should start getting more involved and won't notice how you're close to finish. So, hang on, you are almost there (up)

Thank you, PeteManic! Sounds very reasonable. I think I will try to follow your strategy. From my experience sometimes I end up going back and revising, redoing the very first small part over and over again and stuck there without moving forward at all. I've decided to finish the first part, write the first draft, note the details to review and just move on to the next sections. Otherwise, it's so easy to get stuck looking for perfection and at the end of the year with very little done.

This may be a stupid question... In the process of working on your research project, when do you start writing up? Suppose you have 3-4 slightly different chapters. Do you collect results on ALL of them and THEN start writing? In my case, after finding some initial piece of results, I feel the need to write and interpret them first and then move on to the next part. Did you write drafts for each chapter in the process of doing your PhD or did writing up started only having gotten all the results in your hand?

Wow! Congratulations!!! You fully deserve to feel relieved and take a break now. Once again, congratulations!(up)