Hi, just want to reach out with anyone who may be going through a similar thing. I’m 24 and my mum has cervical cancer which has spread to her bone and lung. She has been told it’s terminal and been given about 2 years to live as an average. She’s only in her 40s and I have two young teenage siblings who still rely on her. It’s been incredibly difficult and I find it hard to talk about but I’m still really struggling to accept that this is the reality and I may soon lose my best friend. I’m trying to stay strong for my mum and my siblings because they need me at this time but I know really I need to process this properly and all I want to do is take her pain away but I can’t. She is in a lot of pain with her muscles and joints while on immunotherapy and I don’t know how I can help her. I feel so powerless and all I want to do is make it better. No one else seems to understand how it feels and just keep saying she might have many more years than 2 but realistically I know that may not be the case and I need to be prepared. I don’t know how I will cope when she’s gone as she’s my favourite person in the world and my biggest support. She seems to be doing okay at the moment but my biggest worry is that I won’t see it coming and it may happen suddenly. Any advice on how I might prepare myself or other experiences of terminal cancer and how fast it happened would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Hi Katy1818
Welcome to our community, I hope you find it both informative and supportive.
I am Steve one of the community champions and my experience of cancer is via my wife who has Leiomyosarcoma so a bit different to your mum.
When Janice was diagnosed she never wanted a prognosis and I really struggled with that. Over years however I came to realise that they are little more than an educated guess. We see many on here who live well beyond their prognosis, some who seem almost to die to order and a few cases of people who die early - who is that average person anyway.
Perhaps the most practical way to help is to listen, I certainly learnt that as it is something people often struggle with thinking we need to be doing something.
For your children you might like to look at talking to children and teenagers and with our son we recognize how helpful his schools were in making sure he was supported and got consistent answers.
<<hugs>>
Steve
