looking for some help or advice on how to help my mum through her diagnosis. Waiting on biopsy results so all still quite early and they scan etc didnt confirm the “primary” cancer although there is a tumour. I don’t really understand if all.
Understandably my mum isn’t herself, she’s back home but has trouble eating and has already lost a lot of weight and strength. So she’s gone from being very capable (she’s 71) to not within the space of a month.
I have a two year old and maybe naively I thought she would help lift her because they all say young kids help through these times but I don’t feel it is. I feel it’s worse because it’s a reminder she can’t do the things she used to with her and my daughter is too young to understand it.
Basically I don’t know what to do for the best, visit her with my daughter or go alone, sometimes it feels like my mum doesn’t want to see anyone and maybe she doesn’t but how do I keep her spirits up when all I think about is her dying whilst trying to look after a defiant toddler!
any advice is welcome!
Hi @ldw83,
Welcome to the community though we are always a little bit sorry to have someone join our special club.
Waiting is always a challenge and the diagnosis process is certainly a key element on that; there is a lot of information to take in as we can see if we look at some of the collected wisdom we have here.
Another line to consider of course is remembering we need to look after ourselves too, if we look at our pages on supporting someone there are many lessons I learnt a bit more on the hard way.
It is my wife who has the cancer, and it was incurable from the start, but in her case chemotherapy rendered it stable and we have been living with cancer now for over 6 years.
<<hugs>>
Steve
