Yesterday was one of the hardest days I've ever had. 4 weeks ago I took my mum to a&e after she had lost function of her left arm. We suspected she had a trapped nerve and laughed about it while we waited. The triage nurse made her feel awful about being there asking her how it was a life or death situation. After 8 hours of waiting and 2 CT scans she's was promptly shown to her bed for the night without any explanation. Watching my mum break down in tears through fear was so hard.
After another short wait we saw a junior dr who explained they had found two lesions on her brain, these could be cancer or something else but initial prognosis was cancer.
Mum had to stay in hospital over night while they carried out more tests. The over night turned into almost two weeks stay in hospital, she had a breast examination, the dr looked for cancer markers, checked all her skin, listened to her lungs, carried out scans of her womb and ovaries. All tears appeared to show no signs of cancer.
During her stay in hospital my whole family were called in to see her, we all thought the worse and as we arrived she broke down in tears, apologising and telling us there was no cure.
I have never felt anger like it, I walked away as quickly as I could only to be cornered by a nurse and told how much she would need me there.
I returned to the room and 10 minutes later the dr arrived and took us into a room to explain what they knew.
Nothing. They knew nothing. My mum had got worked up but the dr didn't tell us anything like she had said. She said that because it's on her brain that it's spread from somewhere else and the best job was to book a biopsy and try and find out where.
During mums stay in hospital the Drs also suspected it could of been toxoplasmosis on the brain and not cancer at all, but after looking again this was dismissed.
She was prescribed steroids to stop the swelling on the brain which has made her more unwell than the cancer itself.
The biopsy was carried out two weeks ago and while the surgeon was in there she again said it looked more like an infection then cancer and a swab was taken but this was ruled out again.
Mum had 12 staples in her scalp to hold the wound shut and a small patch of hair shaved. She luckily didn't suffer much pain or discomfort after the surgery and the staples came out a week later.
Yesterday on 24th March she attended her appointment at the hospital to find out the results. She has metastatic adenocarcinoma. There are so many lesions on the brain that although small are not curable or able to be operated on. The primary cancer is in her lung which is also small, but can't be cured.
She had a cough for around 4-5 weeks over Xmas. Eventually she saw her gp who said it was a chest infection and gave her antibiotics. We don't know if it was the cancer or not. The pills cured the cough so we hope nothing was missed.
They don't know how long she had had it and there has been no mention of the "stage" she has. She is due to start radiotherapy in the next couple of weeks targeting the specific points in the brain and then the lungs. She's also hoping to be able to have a drug that targets lung cancer, but it has to be the right type of cancer and were waiting to know yeh results on that.
The dr has told her that if she fails to respond to treatment she could only have 6 more months.
6 months. How do I even begin to think about that. She's supposed to see my son grow up and have great grandchildren and die an old lady!
The amount of anger I feel has consumed me. I don't want to watch her suffer. I don't want to watch her die!
There are no words I can say to her, there is nothing I can say to anyone.
Come on cancer! We're ready for the fight! And we WONT lose!
