Hi my sister was diagnosed in Feb 2017 with Triple negative breast cancer. In May 2020 she was told it has progressed to stomach, and adrenal gland. In June 2020 she started her 3rd round of chemo and was given capecitabine. she had a bad reaction and ended up in hospital with heart complications. she then had a blocked bile duct and a stent was put on which caused Acute pancreaitis and has been very ill since then. She is still in hospital and having 24 hour pain control through morphine driver. She has been told today that she will probably need morphine driver when she goes home and a palliative care District Nurse will come in every day. I am so worried that this could be the beginning of the end. She is stage 4 terminal, but don't know if I should be preparing for the worse in the next few weeks. She is due to start her 3rd round of chemo next week but I really don't think she is able.
Hi and welcome to the community though so sorry to hear about your sister.
In my case it is my wife who has cancer and somewhat different too, Leiomyosarcoma and it took me sometime to understand some of the terminology. When I first heard palliative care I thought - well that is then - but what is really means is treating symptoms rather than the disease itself.
Her oncology team would not even offer chemotherapy unless they though it would be helpful, not least because as your sisten unfortunately discovered sometimes the treatment can be harder than expected. My wife's first encounter with chemotherapy contributed to a collapsed lung and that diverted attention away from cancer because it was much more urgent to get that treated. Her second round of chemotherapy though rendered her cancer stable and we now have been living with cancer for over 6 years.
One thing that really helped me was doing a living with less stress course, trying to focus on the here and now and appreciate what we have because my mind was in the future thinking how will I cope after she dies, some people refer to this as pre-grief. There are times when life will kick us in the teeth totally out of the blue too - the conscious breathing skills I learnt on the course can be really good for bringing me back in to control to focus on what to do now.
There are some really good tips in Looking after someone with cancer but perhaps the best of all is to remember to make time for yourself - we need to be nice to ourselves so that we are in the best place to look after the ones we love.
<<hugs>>
Steve
