My Dad has cancer + my Mum feels I'm not doing enough

Hi anyone,

I've never posted on any kind of web forum before - but - like all of us on here - my life was turned upside down a few weeks ago. My 76 year old Dad had been experiencing lower back pain since Xmas, it was getting worse but GP kept saying it was just a muscle sprain (he had no other symptoms whatsoever). Then, on the 3rd March he collapsed at home, couldn't feel his legs (I naively though it was a slipped disc or something) - it turned out to be stage 4 cancer - the primary being in the oesophagus (he had no symptoms associated with that area at all).

Anyway, long story short, he is too weak / it's to advanced for chemo and the prognosis is two - four months only. I still can't fathom how he was completely fine / driving / walking around etc the day before this happened and then it's literally like a bomb going off.

Anyway, it's unbearably, unbearably sad - it's just horrendous and I often ask myself 'How do patients / relatives / partners etc live through the horror of this?' BUT, what brings me here today is the absolutely cataclysmic row I have just had with my Mother. She is 76 years old and in perfect health (I am 45, married, a teacher and live just up the road from her).  My Dad has been in hospital since March the 3rd and he is ridiculously precious about his car - my Mum is insured to drive it but didn't drive it massively regularly before all this happened, but, she is a perfectly competent driver. When my Dad was first diagnosed, I moved in with my Mum for a week and had the week off work (school / my Headteacher were thrilled as you can imagine!)  But, because my Dad gets so wound up about her driving the car up to the hospital + what if it gets scratched? etc, etc, and it can be horrendous to find a car parking space, the pattern for the last however many weeks is that she has got a taxi up to the hospital during the day (as myself and my husband are both at work) and then, my husband has been picking me up as soon as school finishes, going straight to the hospital to see my Dad for a couple of hours and then taking my Mum home so she doesn't have to get a taxi both ways. My older brother lives 50 miles away, so he can only come down at weekends. I've done as much other stuff as I can to support her as well (I got my friend who is an OT to chase up the hospital bed for when, HOPEFULLY, my Dad will be discharged to come home; got bedding for the hospital bed; got my husband to put together her new hoover + fix the blind; done online banking for her and my Dad - because she doesn't know how to do it etc, etc). I haven't been able to do everything she probably would have liked me to, but I have really tried my best. 

BUT, a couple of days ago, she basically turned on me, saying that I haven't done enough to help her / have made her 'beg' for lifts home from the hospital??? (I hand on heart do not know what she is talking about there) - she is being pretty vile to be honest - she says that 'I have no idea what it's like for her' - which is right, I don't, it's my Dad but it's her husband they have been together for 55 years - I completely get it, but, I don't know how to deal with how she has turned on me like this.

There have been very occasional times when I haven't been able to pick her up from the hospital because I have had to stay at work for meetings / 6th form lessons etc - but, my husband and I would still have picked her up after that, but it would've been later than she wanted to stay at the hospital. This whole situation I am in with her kicked off on Monday of this week because she rang and asked me if we could come and collect her from the hospital and I said we could at 5.30 because my husband didn't finish work until then - she then flew into a rage and said that was too late a time to pick her up and slammed the phone down on me.

She has warned me not to say anything to my Dad about me and her falling out as that 'would be so selfish of me when he is seriously ill' - I wonder if it's more because she knows she is being quite out of order and that my Dad will tell her that. In fact, her parting words about an hour ago were that she'd 'never let me step foot in the house again' if I did tell him. Anyway, I haven't said anything to him about it and don't intend to, but, I am sure he will twig that something's up soon. 

Just to put it into context - my Mum has always been, at times, quite a difficult person. She has quite a spiteful side which comes out if things don't go exactly her way and my relationship with her from my teens to my late twenties was often very difficult when she perceived I hadn't lived up to her expectations / hadn't done exactly what she wanted. My brother is, in many ways, quite fortunate as he lives far away, it's fair enough that he doesn't come down in the week - however, when he comes down at the weekends, he doesn't always stay the whole weekend even as he has social events etc to go back for... but, as is the case in many families, there's always the golden child who can do no wrong etc etc. 

I know that she is completely grief-stricken, I know that people do / say things they don't mean in these circumstances, but, I just really don't know what to do next or where to go with it. I am sat here right now and I have loads of work I need to do for school before we go back on Monday and it's stuff I HAVE to do (my Head of Department is another difficult woman) but I just feel so sick / despairing / can't stop crying. Everything was hideous anyway but now, it's just kicked up another notch into something even more awful. 

If anyone has any thoughts or views or any similar experiences, I would be really grateful to hear about them. 

Katie xx

PS My heart + best wishes go out to everyone on here who is going through similar - cancer is an indiscriminate, tsunami-sized bomb that goes off in your life when your only worry before was getting through the week at work or cleaning the bathroom or some such nonsense (which seemed so important / arduous - we really didn't know how we were born, did we?). For everyone who is trying to survive and pick their way through the wreckage cancer leaves, you are not alone.