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
