Hello everyone,
I lost my mum to cancer several years ago. My dad has been diagnosed for a few years now and it’s no longer curable. He’s just finished second bout of radiotherapy for secondary and new tumour in new location from primary one. The decline in my dad has been quite quick and if I’m honest, I’m so scared of knowing my dads in pain. He has slow release morphine based meds and liquid morphine for breakthrough but I’m not sure its helping. I feel selfish for being so rubbish at supporting him (I don’t live nearby) but I feel almost traumatised by losing my mum and I’m so scared of this happening again as although his teams haven’t said there’s no more treatment, I do know what’s coming at some point and it scares the hell out of me (but then how selfish is that since it’s not happening to me?). How do I manage my own family and work and dad when here’s 100 miles between us (but even if there wasn’t, I can’t cope with seeing my dad in pain and I am really not up for physical caring role (again, how terrible is that , what a terrible daughter).
Much love to all.
Hi :Belle40
Sorry to hear about both your dad and your mum. You comment about being selfish - that is something people often feel, on the other side we often hear a cancer diagnosis referred to as a tsunami - it gets to everyone. If we look at your feelings when someone has cancer it is easy to see how "normal" we are - in this odd version of normal anyway.
For us my wife has the cancer; she never wanted to know how long and I really struggled with that but as usual she was right because the diagnosis was over 10 years ago. I ended up doing a living with less stress course and that really helped me because I was spending all the time in "what happens when..." mode and that stopped me enjoying the here and now.
I am sure your dad is really happy that you are looking after his grand children and likely want you there with them. Hopefully your dad has a needs assessment and those are being met - if not get him to chase his local authority to make sure that gets done and then you can feel his care needs are being looked after even if not by you.
Do post on here whenever and if you think it might help you might like to consider contacting either cruse bereavement care or the loss foundation as they are experts in helping people find a direction through grief.
<<hugs>>
Steve
