Hi everyone,
I'm new here. My mum was diagnosed in January with stage 4 colon cancer, after being fobbed off with vague IBS diagnosis. She responded well to chemo but her last pet scan came back showing it had returned. She’s been extremely ill on chemo, that she has every other week. I’m an only child and both myself and my mum are single. We both don’t have other family, it’s just us. I’m 45, she’s 68. I always knew losing her would be horrendous but it happening when she was so vibrant and full of life has been a massive shock. I live and work about 2 hours from her, traffic depending, which isn’t helpful. She has two dogs that I will have to care for when she does pass which will mean I’ll have to leave my home (no dogs allowed) and live in her house which is crammed full of her personality. Being there when she’s not there anymore makes me feel physically sick. I’m generally a very positive person but I’m so overwhelmed with sadness for her, panic for me, I feel like I’m drowning. Not having other family is really hard and I never see experiences from only children who are single so I feel really really alone.
Hi Karley,
I am so sorry about what you are going through. I can relate to some parts of this, because I too am/was an Only One.
I am now 65 but when I was 34 I lost my mum to breast cancer. I lived in Yorkshire and my parents lived in Croydon, and in the earlier years of her illness I wasn't yet driving so it was up and down the M1 by coach, or sometimes I took the train. I have a live-out partner but was effectively single as he was working away from the area at the time.
My dad was diagnosed with cancer around the time my mum had her cancer return, which was about 1991 I think. By about the end of 1993 I was still up and down the M1, but more frequently by now, and driving by now, trying to snatch time off work where I could, and by that time I had them both in hospital - my dad having surgery and other treatment in one hospital, and my mum in the hospice at the other end of town. I would go from one to the other and then back to the first, ferrying letters from my dad to my mum and then her replies back to him.
It was very tough. I had a cousin I was quite close to, also an Only One, but when my dad ultimately died in 2003, because he was Steve's uncle and not his own dad, I knew my cousin couldn't completely feel exactly how I was feeling.
My mum was 79 when she died, and my dad a month shy of 79 when he did. I was youngish, because they had been older parents, especially my mum who was 45 when I was born. It was a very lonely experience, more so with my dad nine years after my mum had gone, and on that level I can relate to how you are feeling at this time.
One thing I should say is that at the moment, because your mum has been responding to the treatment, although you feel that this loss is going to happen, it may not necessarily be impending. There are many people on these forums who are living with terminal cancers, whose treatments are not curing them but they are being given much more time, and often quality time, because of the modern advances in medicine. The outlook for cancer is improving all the time, year by year. Whilst it's good, and necessary, to plan ahead - which you obviously are doing with regard to where you will live and what will happen to the dogs and the house - at this stage, the time your mum still has left may be longer than you fear right now. There may be alternatives to the scenario you are envisaging at the moment. You may be in a position to decide to move into a totally different house when the time comes, for example, along with the dogs and your mum's special items that you choose to take with you. That time may not come for a long time yet but you have time now to prepare, practically and emotionally, for when it finally does.
As an Only One, I have spent all my life relying way more on friends than on family. We did at one time have a large extended family but were not close to most of them, but after my mum died, and then my dad, it was as if the distant relatives had all either themselves died (the older ones) or had drifted away (the younger ones), busy with their own families. I looked for, and found, support in all manner of places. Friends - just a few, but good genuine ones - and once the internet took off, online friends. I had counselling for a while after my dad died, which transpired that I hadn't properly grieved for my mum all those years before; and for my own health problems, have found a lot of support on forums such as this Macmillan one. What you are experiencing, has knocked you hard and shocked you hugely, but we Only Ones are tough at heart because we have been so used to not having any siblings to rely on, and whilst that seems to be a clear disadvantage at times like this, in effect I have always believed it somehow made me better able to work through my life knockbacks.
But yes, it is very lonely. There is nobody who can possibly feel exactly what you are feeling right now, because there is nobody else who has your mum as their mum. But look around you to see if there is anyone who can be empathetic and comforting, such as a good friend or two, and draw them to you.
I too am a generally positive person but am not immune to feeling overwhelmed and fearful. But positivity can help bring you through, even though it doesn't seem so at the moment. Try and hold on to any little positives that you can, and look for other positives wherever you can. You sound very close to your mum, and sharing how you both feel at this time and as time goes on, might be one of the positives?
Sending you hugs 
....I find these forums very supportive because everyone here is so friendly, understanding, caring and compassionate, and I hope you will find that too as you read and share.
