Facing the reality of living with a parent who has incurable cancer

Hi everyone,

I wanted to write something here as a lot of painful feelings have resurfaced again around my Mums cancer.

My Dad texted me yesterday to say he'd taken my Mum to hospital because of bad chest pains over the last 24 hours. I was very worried but she had an x-ray, ECG and a blood test and they said the cancer was stable and couldn't see any clear sign as to why she's having them. She is on heart medication to slow her heart down as she has palpitations. The doctor suspected it may be a muscular issue but didn't get any real answers. It was relieving that it wasn't the cancer getting worse though.

And this incident just brings back into sharp focus the reality that I'm living in. My Mum could die any day. And you just have to go about your life as normal as you can, but then when she has to go to the hospital or has some kind of new issue it just makes me go into a headspace where I think "Is this it? Is the end on the way?"

And honestly this is like torture having to live like this.

I think I am starting to slowly realise though that this pain isn't going to go away. Ever. Even when she passes, the pain of losing a loved one is permanent, is it not? You don't get over that.

I keep expecting the pain to just go away at some point but it won't. That is where the torture comes from. Its not the pain itself but the hope that it'll go away. And somehow I need to learn to live with the pain, without it knocking me off course.

That is the brutal reality for all of us who have family or friends with cancer. And that's why we must absolutely live our lives on our own terms. Do what we want to do. Love who we want to love. Be bold and take risks. Have big dreams and go after them. Because if you're doing that you can at least use that as leverage to the horrific pain we will experience throughout our lives, through losing loved ones or other similar traumatic events.

Thanks for reading.