My mum has inoperable breast cancer. She had breast cancer before, and after an operation and six months of chemo, she beat it, but it came back in August 09 and this time its not going to go away. She's on chemo, but they can't operate to remove it (the doctor described it as being like getting ink out of paper), and eventually its going to spread. Predictably we don't have a real time frame, but when she told me she said she'd probably still be around next year, but after that there's no guarantees.
She's really tough though, so I assumed she'd stubbornly confound expectations like she normally does. Even now she won't give up work, or anything she does outside of work. I can occasionally convince her to let me help with housework when I'm home, but that's it. Anyway, I've heard that having the right attitude helps, so I thought she'd do better than doctors said she would.
But yesterday, she got the results from her latest PET scan, and its become resistant to the chemo and has spread to her neck and middle. Just lymph nodes, not any major organs, but still, I was under the impression this wasn't supposed to happen yet. No one said anything about the possibility of cancers becoming imune to chemo. Apparently, as she told me last night, there's a list of types of chemo, and as it becomes resistant to each type they move you down the list. I guess this is probably normal and standard procedure, but to me it sounds terrifying. What if next time it becomes resistant, it spreads into something vital?
It was a total of five weeks between her telling the doctors about some pain in her armpit and neck, and getting the results and change in treatment. In the intervening time, they did a pointless CAT scan that showed nothing at all, made her wait for those results, and then made her wait another 2 weeks for a PET scan, and then another week for those results. In all that time the chemo was useless and the cancer was growing and spreading. I know the NHS has staffing problems and its not the doctors or nurses fault, but right now I can't help feeling incredibly angry about the amount of time it takes just to get a diagnosis. I'm not the type of person who gets angry, but in the last 24 hours I've spent a lot of time furious with the world, the NHS, and God. No one told me it was going to happen this fast.
She's a committed Christian too, and she said about a month or two ago after being overwhelmed in a service, that she felt like God was telling her everything was going to be okay, for all of us. My own faith has been a little rocky all my life, but in general I firmly believe in God, I just don't trust Him very much. Now I'm so so angry that He told her that, and that I let myself believe it.
I'm really really scared. I love her so much, she's the most wonderful person I know, and the person I'm closest to in my family by a long way. I've got pretty much every form of social anxiety that's been identified by professionals, so the people I'm close to mean so so much to me, and though it pains me to admit it I am pretty dependent on them, and her in particular. I really don't know how I'm going to cope when she dies. I'm barely coping now.
And to top it off, as a family, we don't talk about feelings, EVER. Not serious feelings, anyway. So, none of us talk about how we're doing with all this, and so none of my family know just how badly I'm doing with it. At that service I mentioned when she felt like God said it was going to be okay, she told me, and I burst into tears and sobbed on her for about half an hour, and she said she loved me. That was an unbelievably big deal for me. It's the first time she'd said that to me since I was a toddler, and the first time I'd felt able to cry about it in front of her. But that was a one off. At home, we all carry on like everything's fine, and I guess you have to, but I'm not wired like that. If I bottle it up for two long, I end up breaking and spending a week being secretly incredibly depressed and crying all the time. Take this recent news about it spreading, for example - they're all carrying on like everything's fine. My mum might confide in my dad how she's feeling, but that's as far as it goes. I, meanwhile, have not gone 2 hours straight without crying in the last 24 hours. But I can't say anything, because I don't want to worry them and I have never been able to admit to anyone when I'm not. With the exception of here, where I'm anonymous and talking to strangers.
I don't know what to do. I'm so so scared, and I'm really angry, and I can't stop crying, and I have to deal with that while doing my degree, finding a job, struggling with my extreme social anxiety that renders me unable to speak if there's more than one other person in the room, and sometimes not even then. I'm just so scared. I don't want to lose her.
