Hi all! I'm new here. I just need a spot to right down everything just to get it out before I lose my mind. My mom, Barbara, who is 59 years old has been diagnosed with an incurable form of lung cancer. It has spread to the right frontal lobe on her brain. She is very upbeat, but very tired. She gets radiation 5x's a week and chemo once a month for 3 hours. She got her first chemo last week and is so very tired and drained, all she wants to do is sleep. They said this will pass as her body adjusts to the treatment. Normally she lives with me and my family, now she is with my sister because the hospital is closer to her where mom is being treated. My two children are missing her terribly. I took them to visit yesterday and my son who is 11 and has slight autism, left feeling very confused. We haven't told him yet that it;s cancer, just that mommom is sick and she's trying to get better so she can come home. My daughter,14, is aware that it is cancer, but not the fact that it's incurable. To top it all off we just buried my grandmother, mom's mom, in September, she died from cancer. By the time they realized she was even sick, it was too late and with her being 87, treatment wasn't an option. It was 25 days from diagnosis to the end. It went so fast we are still trying to process it all. Now to have mom sick, I'm wondering when do we get a break? Do we ever?
FormerMember
hello, im new on this site too! so sorry to hear about your mom, especially when it was not so long since you lost your grandma too.
it is very tiring when first having chemo, but hopefully your mom will cope better as time goes on.
i, too have been through lots of treatment since being diagnosed with breast cancer in june 2005. it went to my spine and liver within about 18 months, but Praise God, it is all under control and iam not doing too bad at the moment. please feel free to mail me when ever, i would welcome a chat with anyone in similar circumstances.
I'm really sorry to hear about your mum and can identify with you feeling that life so seems so unfair at times. I'm quite new to here too and am in a very similar situation to you. It must be hard for you that's she is not living with you at the moment as you will want to be involved in everything and spend as much time with her as she can. I found that I expereince so many different emotions with my mum in one day, it's just so hard to believe really. My mum has been diagnosed with terminal cancer too and told that she had less than a year. I've taken leave from my work and and moved home to look after her. My mum expereinced chemo in the same way as yours, it took so much out of her, she too had an unbeat attitude. Feell feel to email me whenever as it sounds like we are both going through something very similar. Take Care
I think we are dealing with the same thing. They gave her 12-15 months with treatment. This all just seems like a bad dream and I so desperately want to wake up! Everyday I pray for a miracle, but it never comes. It is so hard watching and not being able to do anything but watch. I just keep looking at her hoping to save as many memories as I can store in my head. I still can't quite wrap my head around it all. I have good days and really bad ones. I try to hide my sadness from the kids, who are feeling much of the same sadness, because they are very close to her too. I need to get myself together to help them through all this. This so sucks! I don't know how many times I said that or how many more I will, but it really does suck!
Life certainly not treating us well lately. I hope you are right that she will be able to deal with the treatments better over time. Her cancer also spread to her brain. They found 2 spots on her right frontal lobe. The only good part of that is the right frontal lobe doesn't control anything. It's because of the spots on her brain we found out she was sick. She had a seizure about 3 weeks ago and I called the ambulance to take her to the hospital. They said the tumors caused swelling on her brain which in turn caused the seizure. Life has been upsidedown since that day. It sound like you have your own set of issues. I hope everything stays under control for you. Please, also, feel free to mail me too, it is nice to have someone to talk to.
The right for everyone to be treated appropriately, regardless of age, and any other non clinical criteria must be defended. While it is true that some people die of something else and the cancer grows so slowly that the person would die of old age before the cancer becomes a problem, that is in fact a clinical matter.
I'm sorry to hijack your blog, but it is important that we defend everyone's right to a good chance.
It is such a pity your mother wasn't diagnosed sooner, and you must be having real problems with explaining to the children. You probably need to discuss how your mother wants to play it, but telling your daughter may be the best thing. My 9 year old granddaughter was very worried about me, and it was good to be able to reassure her. You need to explain that while it is unlucky that your mother didn't get diagnosed in time, there are new things being discovered every day, and lots of people recover from Cancer. If she gives her grandmother lots of love it will make all the difference in the world to her and make her very happy. Incurable doesn't always mean untreatable, and there will be a lot of things that can be done for her. Don't panic if a hospice is mentioned. They do a lot of palliative care and people go in and out with good pain management solutions.
You will get a break, but you will always be aware of the danger signals. I hope you have some adults around you as well as the children.
