Breast cancer diagnosis in frail 93 year old

Hi MgtM

Welcome to the online community. My name is Kathryn and I am one of the Cancer Information Nurse Specialists on the Macmillan Support Line. This must be a very difficult time for your family.

I hope you’re finding it helpful to share your experience with us. You may be interested in joining the breast cancer forum and supporting someone with incurable cancer forum.

As a charity separate to the NHS, we don’t have access to medical records and therefore do not know the details of your mother’s cancer and what her prognosis might be.

I would encourage you to get back in touch with your mother’s doctor to ask about possible life expectancy in terms of months or years. They may be able to offer average figures on how long people in a similar situation usually live.

If your mother has not yet been offered a referral to the palliative care team, I would contact her GP or specialist doctor to ask for this to be done. Palliative care offers physical, emotional, and practical support. You can learn more about the health and social care professionals that could be involved in your mother’s care here.

If your mother hasn’t already had a care needs assessment from social services this may be beneficial for her as her care needs are likely to increase over the coming weeks. The referral can be done by the GP, or you can do a referral on her behalf to the local council. If your mother is found to have care needs she would then have a financial assessment to establish whether she will need to contribute to the costs.

Looking after someone with cancer can be very challenging, you can find practical tips that you may find helpful. It can also be difficult emotionally and it is important to access emotional support and look after yourself. You can find lots of self-care tips on our wellbeing hub.

Sometimes it can be good to talk through what’s happening. If you think it would help you can call us free on 0808 808 0000. Our line is open seven days a week, 8am – 8pm.

I hope this information has been useful, please contact us whenever we can help. 

Take care.  

Kathryn

Cancer Information Nurse Specialist  

 Ref: KR/SF