Hi all, i’m new to this so not even sure if this is the right forum to be posting this in but i just need some advice if possible / curious if anyone else has had any similar experiences.
I’m in my late teens and my mum who’s in her early forties was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. She completed all of her treatments and everything was going well but now i’m just worried about how she is acting after completing them. She takes quite a few medications (I don’t know exactly which ones) to help with all side effects you may get but she’s just constantly upset and angry which I’m assuming is because of the hormones.
At first i couldn’t quite understand why and i mean i still don’t fully understand why she feels like that, but i feel like i’m the only person around her that isn’t just oblivious to why she’s acting the way she is. Almost every week she will have a big argument with someone and i know she doesn’t mean to do it, she’s just frustrated at the world and is confused why this happened to her of all people, but none of my family can see it like i do. If this was just a one time thing i would be able to understand why nobody else is paying attention to her behaviour but because this has been happening for well over 3 months, i’m just so unbelievably confused on how i’m the only one seeing it in a different light? She is quite obviously trying to ask for help and i just don’t know what to do.
It’s hard for me to know what to do, i’m just a scared young woman who doesn’t want to see her mum struggle and i’ve never experienced anything like this before. I know i could try and bring it up to my family but they would most likely just tell me I’m being stupid and / or that they don’t know how to help. I also would rather not ask them for help as when my mum was first diagnosed they told me that they would do anything to help us out, but they’ve barely done anything. I don’t want to straightforwardly bring it up to my mum either because i don’t want her to feel like I’m telling her she’s not okay incase that makes her worse but i really do want to get help for her because i feel like she truly needs it to carry on living life to the fullest.
This whole thing is just really confusing me and I’m overwhelmed with what to do. Any advice or whatever would be greatly appreciated, thank you
Hi Mimis
Welcome to our community, I hope you find it both informative and supportive.
It does sound like you are in a really difficult position, sometimes people do turn somethng of a blind eye to outbursts putting things down to "just the cancer" when sometimes it can be as you say a call for help.
I wonder if it might help to look at our pages on breast cancer especially the section on after treatment.
For you it might be helpful to look at Your feelings when someone has cancer as being able to recognize our own emotions can help us feel a bit more in control.
<<hugs>>
Steve
