Hey
my mum was diagnosed on Jan 9th with peritoneal mesothelioma she has been told today that palliative care is now the only option as it’s spread already to her bowel and she’s too symptomatic for why was the planned treatment of immunotherapy.
we’re all devastated as expected
How do we progress with what’s next? Care at home, hospice services ect x
advice welcomed ( midlands based if that makes a difference)
Dear Jugglingsunflowers
Thank you for getting in touch with the Macmillan online community, my name is Pauline and I am one of the Cancer Information Nurses on the Macmillan Support line.
I am so sorry to hear your difficult news. To hear that your mum is not fit enough for the planned treatment must be so disappointing for you and your family.
Having a supportive palliative care team around your mum will help both you and her to cope with the diagnosis and will help to get her symptoms under control.
It is unclear from your message if your mum is at home or if she is in the hospital. There is usually a team based within the hospital for inpatients. They can help to manage symptoms and help to get the person to their preferred place of care, whether that be home or elsewhere. If your mum is an inpatient in hospital, you can ask the nurse that is taking care of her to ask the palliative care team to come and see her.
If mum is at home, then the team she will be under the care of the GP and the district nurse. The GP and the district nurse work closely together and are the fundamental palliative team, however when a person has complex needs such as your mum may have, they invite the specialist team into help.
The specialist team is usually based in a local hospice, however not always, sometimes it is a clinic. You can find the local hospice using this link. Mums GP can make a referral for her. What happens next is the patient would normally be allocated a specialist nurse, the CNS. The nurse may visit her at home and will be her link to the wider team. The team have many different professionals who your mum then has access to as is needed. This referral can take a couple of weeks to process, in the meantime mum still has the input of her GP and district nurse.
We have some useful information on our website that can give you a better understanding of what is involved. Have a look at Looking after someone with cancer.
I can see that you have joined our online forum for carers, I hope you are finding this useful. You may also find our friends and family forum helpful.
Marie Curie has a lot of useful information on their website also. They have these booklets which you can either download or order in paper copy from the website
I think it would be really helpful if you could give us a call on the helpline so that we can talk you through what kind of support that is available and how to access this. The number is 0808 808 0000 and we are open from 8am to 8pm seven days a week.
Ref PG/AP
Best Wishes
Good morning
thank you for your reply that’s a lot of useful information
mum is currently in hospital I believe a inpatient team may have been to see her, as her next of kin they said they would call me but haven’t as of yet , I got the flu and haven’t been able to get to see her for a week now 
much better now
i will call the help line as I think talking it through would be good
