I feel this may turn into a rant/bit of an outpouring. As a bit background, my dad passed away after a two year battle with Acute Myloid leukaemia in 2015 when I was 20. Just two years later, we got the heartbreaking news that my mum had Acute Myloid Leukaemia as well, and it was more aggressive than we had experienced with you dads illness.
Now three years later, and several rounds of intense chemotherapy as an inpatient and trying an outpatient version with injections, each time securing remission for a period of about 4-5 months, we’ve received the news that she’s relapsed once again and that we are out of treatment options. My mum is now terminal.
My mum has been solely reliant on me for the past three years to get to hospital appointment, do her shopping and be there to talk to and get things done around the house (including a lengthy battle with our local council after a burst water pipe in one of their properties took my mums kitchen out of action). I am now more afraid than ever that my being their to support her will be the reason she gets an infection that she can’t recover from - I social distance, wear a mask and gloves, but I can’t avoid human contact whilst getting her the things she needs to be happy and comfortable at home.
Meanwhile, I drop her off for her appointments. I can’t be there with her when she speaks to doctors or nurses. Her consultant recently asked if she wanted to bother with her phone call appointments anymore given there’s ‘nothing she can help with’.
In the initial week after the news, we heard from her GP (for e first time in three years), our local hospice and the district nurses. All were clear that Covid means that their limited in what they can do right now, and the district nurses in our area are so chronically understaffed that the lady that visited actually normally works in a different city but has volunteered to help out where we live. Since then, there’s been silence, we don’t know what to expect as she gets sicker. This is nothing like our experiences with my dad, who never made it into remission and passed away in hospital. It feels like we’re fumbling away in the dark trying to figure out what will happen, when it might happen and what we need to do when it does happen.
I never though that at 25 I would be facing a situation where I’d lost both parents and I feel woefully unprepared to support my mum through this process and find a way through.
