My mum was diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks ago . She was told that they could only drain the fluid of her lung and that was it . She has had that done today . So hopefully she can breathe better . I feel that we have been left in limbo . I feel that we haven’t been told anything . I realise my mum is scared and she doesn’t want to stress me but it’s worse not knowing nothing . .
Hi @redhead46,
while hopefully draining the fluid has helped it sounds very unusual to say there is nothing else they could do. Perhaps it might be worth giving the nurse or her GP a call to get a better explanation. Normally at least they would want to keep some kind of eye on things.
<<hugs>>
Steve
Hi , some kinds of chemotherapy can make other conditions much worse so the doctors following their "do no harm" promise would not offer it. However I would hope they would look after your mum in terms of keeping her as comfortable as possible.
Generally experience on here has tended to support not asking for a time scale unless it is very important for some reason ( insurance, welfare payments etc). Any time scale is at best going to be an educated guess based on old data and of course would not likely include any of the other illnesses your mum suffers. We have seen many people blow a prognosis out of the water, a few people who might seem to give up and die to order and a few where the patient did not make it that far where the family end up feeling somehow robbed. It is a bit of news that cannot be put back in the can.
It is quite likely the doctors do not actually know the answers you want, despite all their best efforts there are still a lot of unknowns and sometimes even doing the tests to find the answers is unhelpful as it would not make a difference anyway.
You talk about being a student nurse, do you tutors know what your mum is going through? I am sure there will be some support services available to help you manage in this really tough time for you.
<<hugs>>
Steve
Hi ,
If your mum is not getting the answers she needs for the hospital than another route is for her to contact her GP who might be able to help and it that does not work then the hospital PALS service can try to clear communications issues.
Of course recently lots of hospital resources got diverted to covid - there is the potential for a real problem down the line since some people are not even going to the doctors at the moment and so there is likely to be quite a lot of people worried about cancer but not getting either a diagnosis or an all clear.
Hope the studies go well and sorry to hear about your daughter too, is does sometimes seem life just wants to throw one thing after another at as.
<<hugs>>
Steve
