complicated family and cancer mess

what an exhausting few days!!

2011-07-10T11:52:55Z

got back from my singing tour very early on thursday morning at 5 in the morning!! and have been on the go non-stop ever since, hence not writing a post for a while!!! I went to switzerland in monetreux for the jazz festival where I performed twice with my choir!! It was sooo good being able to perform in front of such a large crowd at a major international festival!! I saw aloe blacc in concert as well as raphael saadiq and BB King, AMAZING. I partied hard and had the time of my life, my bank balance has suffered but it was worth it!!

As for the whole house situation, my mum and I had a massive argument with a couple of the girls, one of whom was giving my mum the evils before anything even happened- what a cow!! Anyway I'm bascially not living there anymore, I'm getting a flat of my own!!

As for my mum she has completed her first week of radiotherapy, she is pretty sore which is to be expected but all is going well :) I found out this week that one of my good friends dad who recently had major heart surgery for a heart attack has prostate cancer as well and will need 7 weeks of RT as soon as he's recovered!! Poor man!!!

Hope you are all well!! love Lia xx

emotionally and mentally drained

2011-06-28T16:39:33Z

ok I'm really finding out who my real friends are now!! And I am very suprised....

Today was my mum's planning pre assessment appointment for her radiotherapy which was fine, although really strange for me to be sat in the waiting room instead of calling patients in!! My mum was really grateful I was there and I'm so glad I could drive her etc. She is due to have 18 fractions of treatement starting on mon. I feel quite gulity as I will be in switzerland then not getting back till late on wed, but I suppose it can't be helped, just bad timing.

The funny thing is through all this is I'm coping with all the cancer and stuff fine, it's everything else that is stressing me out. In my last blog post I talked about house problems with my new housemates. I won't go into details, but they basically treated me like a piece of **** and I'm shocked that they have done that, espcially as they know about everything that's going on at the moment. And they're student nurses surely they should know better?? As well as having them arguing with me and being rude I have to sort out mould in my new room in this house, as well as sorting out my house back home with my parents as we are trying to sell it.... Is it little wonder I am not even excited ar the thought of going to switzerland in 2 days to perform with my choir at a jazz festival, once in a lifetime experience.

I have no energy, all I want to do is be there for my mum and everything keeps on happening. I feel like some people really just don't get it. If any of these 'friends' were in my position they would not be happy. Oh and to top it all off got some bad news the other day, my mum's cousin's son committed suicide. Sorry about the rant guys but I'm really fed up now!!

Love to you all xx

torn

2011-06-20T09:38:35Z

So a few days ago my mum told me about her breast cancer. Now I know my mum and she's not one to show her feelings or that she's scared. But she has a radiotherpy planning appoitnment on the 28th and she said to me you should come it will be inetersting for you. Now this in mum's language is I'm scared I need you. I desperately want to be there for her, but unfortunately in my world it's never simple. On that day I'm meant to be going to southampton to look at rooms for our new house (to decide which ones we have), setting up a bank account etc. I am also meeting my academic tutor which I could rearrange.

I told a couple of my housemates about this and if we could do it another day. One of them turned around and said you're not comprsimising this is the only day we can all do, just because she wants to move in then. I'm just so fed up of trying to be there for my mum but being made to feel guilty for it. I told my friend because I thought she would understand she is a fellow student nurse afterall. So whilst my mum is at a radiotherapy appointment by herself I will be stuck with my non-understanding 'friends' arguing about who has what room, pathetic...

Any ideas would be most appreciated, I am fed up because I am not only torn between my friends and mum but also between my mum and sister as my mum doesn't want my sister to know, and me and my sister have a rocky relationship as it is so if she finds out, I think our relationship will take a hit but so be it, thats the way my mum wants it.

Finally!!

2011-06-17T19:44:24Z

My mum told me tonight, she has breat cancer stage 1, so all is good. I'm just so happy she decided to tell me now. I was so upset she hasn't told me but now she has I feel no anger just love. :)

The discovery

2011-06-15T14:42:54Z

Right here's the meaty part....

I have just come home for the summer as I finally have a break in between my second and third year of nursing, which I tell you is a rariety!! So I decided to spend some time with my family because they mean the world to me.

I think I had suspected something wrong with my mother for quite some time, but in all honesty I was in denial and quite frankly I always thought my mum would trust me with something this big!! After all even though it took her a few days, she did tell me about her thryoid op which is no where near as big a deal. I knew that there was a history of breast cancer in my mum's side of the family, my grandmother died when my mum was 17 of it, so I always knew it was a possiblity that my mum could get it. She had two breast cancer scares in the past so the thought has always been in the back of my mind ever since I was about 7.

I knew that because my mum is in the bracket for breast cancer screening she was getting tested, although this was only by mistakenly finding the letter. I have been at uni the last 4 months so I haven't been aware of what has been going on. On my birthday though, the 12th march I knew something was wrong because usually on my birthday my mum calls in the morning, always by about 11 to wish me happy birthday, but this year she didn't phone until very late, 10.30pm. At the time I knew there was something really wrong but I chose to ignore it naively thinking that my mum would confide in me.... how wrong I was!!

Right so fast forward to yesterday, I was looking through a mound of mail trying to find mail that my parents had forgotton to forward onto me, and I came across my mum's diary. For some reason I had this feeling that I should look in it, there was this marker on one of the ages so I turned to it. In one of the days it said 'breast appointment', my first thought was oh that was probably the screening but the date was much later so I looked at some more pages. As I went through there were more and more entries like 'breast clinic' etc... then I came across the first one that really scared me- 'breast lump removed', then there was 'breast op', 'lymph node check', 'cancer clinic', 'spire hospital'.... I put it away and still thought but surely if my mum had breast cancer she would have told me?

Then today I decided if she hadn't told me then I was going to look through her things in her room. Now I know many of you would think this is a breach of privacy and trust but I had to know I'm her daughter and if anything bad is happening to her then I need to know, I'm training to be a nurse for goodness sake!! I knew she wasn't going to tell me so here I went....

I opened her first drawer next to her bed and lo and behold there was a great fat folder full of cancer appointment letters, consent forms, radiotherapy guides, medications, dressings.... I needed to know everything so I carried on looking and reading through each and every pice of paper that was there. I discovered that she had been called back from her screening and this had eventually led onto being diagnosed with breast cancer. From what I could gather was she had had her lump removed and well as a lymph node check, ultrasound, along with many other things, numerous appointments, clinics and that she was now on anastrozole.

Then I came across something that sent a chill down my spine, which wasn't nearly the worst thing in this file:

It was for an appointment on the morning of the12th march at the private hospital, I don;t know what it was for I couldn't process anything at this point, this was my birthday, this was why my mother hadn't called in the morning.... I had so many questions going through my head:

What did she have to go through on my birthday while I was enjoying myself?

Why didn't she tell me? Was it to protect me because I would have rather been told and been with her than been out drinking?

I put everything back where I found it went to my room and just sat for about an hour, numb, angry, upset, betrayed, why my mum hadn't told me, I could have helped her.... I feel so hurt she's been going through this hell for the last 4 months. I know she's strong and she is protecting me but is she ever planning on telling me? what if she had to have chemo? would she have told me or just preventing me from coming home? I have so many questions but I know I can't talk to her she would never forgive me going through her stuff and I suppose I want to respecther decision of not telling me, I will just have to give her time, I just hope she has time as I don't know the staging or anything..... only time will tell

My family

2011-06-15T14:18:22Z

To begin I would like to breifly explain my family. I have a mum and dad and an older sister who is two years older. I am currently 20 years old and in my third year of nursing at Southampton.

My family has always been 'different' to put it mildly, you know some families just talk about everything, hug each other and say they love each other... well my family is the complete opposite. As far as I remember my parents have never told me directly that they love me, I know they do but it would just be nice for them to occasionally say it. I have been brought up thinking that to say I love them or vice-versa is a sign of weakness, as is showing my feelings. Because of this it is always hard to know what each memebr of my family is going through, what they are feeling and how they are generally coping with life.

My first example of my mother not telling me something significant is when she had half her thyroid removed, she told me a few days after (at least she told me) but not only that, she failed to mention that it could have been cancer- luckily it wasn't. A time when I didn't tell my parents straight away about my health issues was when my dermatologist was very concerned about one of my moles dramatically enlarging, fortunatly it was benign.

So in summary my family has a history of 'protecting' each other though not telling the truth and in all honesty I think this is more dangerous, I know many parents think keeping the 'harsh' truth from us children is protecting us, but it doesn't because we are smart and we find out the truth and the thing that hurts me the most is the fact that they cannot trust us with the truth.