My beautiful mum was diagnosed on Saturday with cancer. She doesn’t want to know any details. It was her 74th birthday yesterday. End of April she thought she had vertigo. In may still felt wobbly, finally got in to see the GP early June but fell and badly hurt her leg. They took bloods and sent her for an X-ray. A week later a nurse said she had chronic bronchitis. They didn’t know why she was so wobbly on her feet. She is now using a stick. She thought maybe it’s her glasses so went to the optician at the end of June. They sent her straight to the hospital eye clinic. 2 masses were found. Mum stopped eating, I thought it was anxiety, frightened in case it was cancer. She then stopped drinking. Hospital appt came through for mid July, she is now so weak she is in a wheelchair. He said he was worried she might have cancer and arranged a scan. Two days later she had it but she was so weak and blood is coming out of her mouth I wheeled her to the ED, they admitted her but she was in a corridor for 3 hours before seeing a doctor. He examined her, said the scan results will be 2 weeks but then he went to find them and it’s cancer that has spread and they don’t know where it started. She is in hospital but the doctors haven’t told us anything about a care plan. I’ve left my number twice, I live 2.5 hours away so can’t go every day. The ward is so noisy, I want her home. I’m heartbroken. It’s so unfair. Has anyone else experienced this lack of information? She was assessed by speech and language and she managed sone custard, not water, and the doctor has said she has to stay nil by mouth. She is now in an acute ward instead of still in urgent care but it’s not nice in there. She said she has had injections but she doesn’t know what for and she’s on fluids. I’m scared she’s only got weeks instead of months
Hi Elaine 2218
That does all sound very difficult and I hope you mum can get a space in perhaps a more appropriate space soon. Not having the information you need is really difficult though of course sometimes the doctors do not have an answer either.
It can be difficult for us not knowing and it can be easy to imagine things worse than they actually turn out. I did a living with less stress course that really helped me and by bringing the focus on to the here and now I learnt to appreciate what we have rather than spending a lot of time thinking about how I would cope after Janice died.
<<hugs>>
Steve
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