My father in law has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer and has a prognosis of about 12 months. We’re a close family and the news has been very hard to deal with, as I’m sure it is for everyone in this position.
Problem is, my mother in law is behaving very negatively about the whole thing and keeps talking (in front of my father in law) about how he’ll be gone next year, how people that he’s meeting up with will be “the last time he sees them” and generally making a lot of comments to the effect that he has a terminal prognosis. She is also not really listening to him or anyone else when we try to put things in a more balanced light. She keeps trying to make lots of plans to see people, telling them that this will be the last time people see him, due to the cancer.
I know this might be how she is dealing with the information, I am trying to understand this, but I have also caught her exaggerating or making up details to others to make the situation sound more serious, which makes us both so angry.
She does have a history of behaving like this, but I think we both hoped that, with the seriousness of the situation, she wouldn’t behave in this way.
My husband and I are massively concerned about the effect this could be having on my father in law. It’s so unnecessarily negative and constantly reinforces the prognosis, which isn’t good, but we’re obviously hoping we can get more time with him.
My mother in law does not do confrontation well, doesn’t really listen to people and I’m worried that if myself or my husband say something about her attitude, she will cause a drama and refuse to speak to or see us, which I desperately don’t want as we want to support and help as much as possible and we don’t want family issues at a time when we want to support his dad.
Does anyone out there have any advice on how to deal with this? Should we talk to her or could we ask someone like our Macmillan nurse to talk to her about the importance of not reinforcing negative statements to him? Or are we worrying unnecessarily?
