The lives of me, my two,sisters, my husband and our son and my brother in law changed forever May 20th 2022 when my beautiful mum was diagnosed with rectal cancer and shadows on one of her lungs. Since then she has faced a barrage of hospital appointments, phone calls and more medication. It’s hard to believe it’s only coming up to a fortnight since she was diagnosed it’s gone that slow. It is so overwhelming for us all especially my mum who’s 76. Her consultant said her cancer is treatable (not curable). Mum is having surgery on 9th June to have a stoma bag fitted but before that we have to go the hospital on 6th to meet her stoma nurse then she has to go to another hospital on 7th June for a full body scan.
On 30th May I took my mum to hospital for her prep op assessment, after being there for a few hours a nurse informed my mum that due to what had shown up on recent heart scans mum was needing to speak to the anaesthetist and was asked to come back the hospital 31st May.
Mum was so poorly on 31st May so I rung the hospital and spoke to a lovely lady in the pre op department. She informed me that the kind of conversation the anaesthetist wanted to have with my mum is not the kind of conversation you have over the phone, I explained my mum was in a lot of pain and felt too weak to drag herself up to the hospital and that mum was in bed and I was dealing with all her telephone calls.
Apparently they are concerned that my mum is at risk of either not making it through the operation or going into cardiac arrest some time after surgery due to issues with her heart and the anaesthetic. They were trying to decide if mum would need a bed on HD or ICU after surgery. I then had a conversation with my mum about DNAR (Do No Attempt Resuscitation). Me being a nurse I have had this conversation so many times with people, never ever did I think I would be having it with my own mum. Straight away mum said she wanted a DNAR put in place. I now have to let my sisters know about this.
Following the stoma bag surgery mum will need a series of chemo and radiotherapy to blast the shadow from her lung and to shrink the tumour that’s in her rectum. The consultant said somewhere down the line mum will probably need to have her rectum removed and possibly one of her lungs.
The hospital have been brilliant with her considering her diagnosis was almost w weeks ago she has been back and forward to the hospital 5 times with more visits to come before surgery. Our GP surgery have been wonderful (which is great as it doesn’t really get a good name for itself). I have rung a few times near in tears asking for pain relief for my mum, for her pain relief to be increases, for something as she is not eating, etc, and each time a GP has rung back and sorted things out for us. Mum has been appointed 2 nurse specialists at the hospital and a support worker, who are in contact with us 3 girls.
There is just so much going on I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. One of my sisters lives with my mum (and has done since our dad passed away suddenly 9 years ago) But she also works from home and is sat in her room from Monday to Friday working. One sister lives about 20 minutes away and I live in my mums road. I’m a nurse so I’m kind of taking charge of phone calls etc.
It is so upsetting seeing my mum suffering. I’m finding it very difficult to cope with it all. When I’m at my mums I put this big brave face on but once I get home I crumble. It is like we are living a nightmare and this is just the beginning ……..
I apologise for going on and Thank you for reading this.
Sending love and hugs to everybody who reads this.
