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Good morning all - at least I think it is morning the last few hours have all been a blur and I decided to begin writing this blog to give me a chance to get my thoughts out there and speak to some other people so please do comment and contact me.
I thought I would start by giving you a bit of background about me. I am 54 years in this world and have been married for 35 of those years to the same person. We have two fantastic sons of 33 and 30. I have a daughter in law, the most beautiful...
Dad completed palliative radiotherapy 2 weeks ago - 6 sessions over 2 weeks for an inoperable/incurable brain tumour. Since then he has spent every day in bed with extreme fatigue. Oncologist nurse unable to confirm if the cause of the fatigue is the tumour or the radiotherapy for another 2 weeks. Is anyone else able to share similar experiences. Dad is 68 and was diagnosed in Jan'16. His prognosis is 3-6 months.
I don't know about anyone else but the minute I had my first surgery, no infact from the minute I had my cancer diagnosis all I constantly craved was everything to go back to 'normal'.
I remember syaing to people 'I can't wait until this is all over so I can go back to normal'. Little did I know that the normal I used to have would never be the same again - This is actually one of the best things that has happened to me and I'll explain why...
I was never a negative person...
I'm not a stranger to this disease. I lost my dad at 14 to pancreatic cancer and remember how he insisted on keeping it a secret - from friends, family, colleagues - until he started losing his thick, dark hair to the chemo and it became apparent something was wrong. My mum, his sole carer and sole bearer of this terrible secret, endured months in long-suffering silence.
Exactly 14 years later, having to break the news to my mum simply broke my heart. Even at the initial stages of being diagnosed...
In a perverse way, finally having a diagnosis came with it a sense of relief. The constant waiting, multiple referrals, and not knowing was frustrating to say the least. Now that it has a name, we can start dealing with it.
I saw mum today, she seemed OK and we had a laugh and a joke. Conversations soon turned to the cancer and we had our first proper chat about it.
She cried a little and it broke my heart. She says she's not scared to die but scared to leave us all behind. She keeps saying I won't get to do this and that, I've told her that's the wrong attitude to have. She will get to do it, I have to believe she will!
I told her how I didn't think she has terminal cancer but incurable...
Yesterday it was three weeks since Pete left home in the ambulance, for what turned out to be the last time. We were so sure he would be home in a few days, he had not been in hospital except for the three operations. Tomorrow it is two weeks since he died.
It's been two days since we've had the prognosis on mum. I saw her today, we did alms shopping with my nan and it was lovely.
Watching her struggle to walk and becoming short of breath was really hard.
We sat down for a coffee and conversion turned to the big C, she has to go to hospital Tuesday for another scan to then make a mask for her radiotherapy points.
I found the courage today to ask her a question that had been bugging me.
"Do Drs always say 6 months to cancer...
Never thought it was cancer, thought I was wasting the docs time. No one in my family ever had cancer. Just dimples made me get it checked.
sent for mammogram and ultrasound still felt that I was wasting their time. Asked radiologist if it was a cyst, she said no, she said cancer. Omg I'm not a fraud after all. I wasn't going to get it checked.
Have been a whirlwind ever since. More tests bone, ct and mri scans. 3cm lump in left breast, still feels like someone else story. Never felt...
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.
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