I'll start at the beginning, but forgive me if I ramble off track.
two/3 years ago my mum developed urinary urgency. She already knew about a small bladder prolapse, so put it down to that. The doctors treated her for a UTI. Around 18 months ago she started belching unusally frequently. The doctors put that down to acid reflux. Around the same time my mum started putting on weight on her stomach. She's 72 and just put it down to 'mummy tummy'. Then the tiredness came. She started fining she needed to have more frequent daytime naps. She put that down to age. Fast forward to last summer. My mum started looking ill. I begged her to go to the doctor, but she just fobbed me off. By the end of September/ beginning of October she was looking so ill, and wasn't able to eat much, so I insisted she went, and told he if she didn't I'd drag her there. The last proper meal I saw her eat was September.
At the beginning of Novermber my mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. That's when things changed rapidly. After numerous blood tests, scans and xrays, the diagnosis came.
By the time she was diagnosed it had already spread through her peritoneum,/abdominal wall, and she also has some form of stomach/gastric tumour thing going on. She has severe ascites. The consultant deciced that low dose carboplatin would be used, after explaining that she has "an abdomen full of cancer", and that the chemo would be used to control the cancer. She had the first chemo session in December. During december I watched her go downhill rapidly. She lost weight, due to not being able to eat. Then mid way through December she vomited blood, so I made her go to hospital, where the stomach thing was found. She came home, but continued to lose weight at an alarming rate, and had become so weak she couldn't walk, so on New Years day she was admitted to hospital, where she's been since.
She cannot eat anything more than a small pot of ice cream, due to the stomach 'thing', and cannot drink any more than sips of water. Mostly whatever she tries to eat comes back up, despite anti sickness meds. I had to go in on Saturday and shower her, because she is refusing to wash, and refusing to let the nurses wash her. What I saw shocked me. She is just a skeleton with skin hanging off her, and a massive stomach due to the ascites, even though she's been drained 3 times and had one dose of chemo, because the ascites just returns very quickly. She is so weak she can't walk without assistance. When I was washing her I noticed discoloured patches on the back of her legs and bottom. I guess pressure marks because she's in bed so long. I asked her if she wanted me to get a nurse to look at them but she said "no, they'll just shove more drugs in me". Her lower legs and feet are swollen now. All her muscle has gone. There's literally nothing but skeleton and skin.
This isn't what I'm struggling with though. What I'm struggling with is her attitude. She told me last week that they bring in antibiotics for her to prevent urine/kidney infection, but she waits until the nurse has left, then throws them away. She's also meant to have liquid thrush treatment to prevent thrush, but she just puts a few drops on tissue and flushes it, so they think she's had it. She's refusing to take them because she says she doesn't have an infection or thrush so why should she. She's refusing the pottassium she's supposed to have because she says it's like battery acid. She's also told the medical team she's had her covid vaccines, but she hasn't, and now there's covid on the ward, though she's in her own room.
I've tried to explain that anything they are giving her is because they think it's necessary, but she just gets snappy with me. I can't tell her team because in the paperwork she signed she agreed to be compliant, or treatment is stopped, and she knows this. I can't be responsible for her treatment being stopped. She's so painfully thin and is due another chemo dose later this week. Keeping her lies is breaking me.
She's turned from my sweet mum into a snipey petulant toddler, with an attitude of "why should I?". I don't want whatever time I have left to be full of arguments and cross words, and I don't feel she has long left, though she's in total denial and is convinced she's having 3 doses of chemo, follwed by a major op, followed by more chemo. Today she told me her blood pressure had dropped dangerously low after being unstalbe for the time she's been in, and she was put on a drip, but she can't understand what the fuss is about, she says her body is her body and we're all different and that's just how her blood pressure is, and she calls the doctors and nurses idiots (not to them, just to me), and says "what do they know".
I don't see how this can be possible when she's so painfully thin and wasted, and hasn't eaten a proper meal since September. I can't talk to her because all I get is "it's me with cancer, not you". I know it's her with cancer, and I'm not trying to make this about me, but all this is breaking me. I'm honestly not sure who this cancer will kill first, because I don't know how long I can do this. Even though mentally she's fine, physically she's a mess, and I wait for that phone call every day with a mix of dread that she could go, but also a little bit of hope that this will all be over soon, then I feel evil for even thinking that she should be gone. I love my mum dearly and would do anything for her, but seeing her being eaten away is hell.
Sorry for the long post, but there's only me and her. We have no other relatives. We have no other help, and I'm really really broken. :( How do you support someone who is so difficult and uncooperative?
