Hi everyone,
Sorry it's a bit of a long one.
My mum was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer in her liver and bones nearly 3 years ago.
She has had various different treatments in that time and for the most part things have seemed pretty stable (although often when we tried to ask more in-depth questions she would just say "I don't know" or "I can't remember" ,- which knowing my mum will have been her way of protecting us)
In the past 8 months her memory has been getting progressively worse, at first it was not remembering big events that happened a few years ago, and her personality changed slightly. She wasn't really interested in her grandchildren anymore. Would switch off mid conversation and start looking what the neighbours were doing out the window, small things that began niggling.
We then started noticing her speech was becoming slurred and she struggled to find words, however when this was initially mentioned to her consultant he didn't seem concerned. (Unfortunately no one could attend with her by that point due to covid)
We started to wonder if she was developing Alzheimer's as my grandma (her mum) suffered from this.
She's had a few admissions to hospital for various things and around October staff at the hospital began to also pick up on the confusion and slurred speech. And referrals began to the memory clinic etc (although despite being chased up the local drs are dragging their heels with this) although she was having these problems the hospital were happy she was ok to continue living alone.
In December her consultant stopped treatment to see if her memory and confusion improved and to rule out if it was being caused by the chemo.
It didn't get any better in this period, if anything it got worse.
The consultant stopped her current treatment as scans showed it didn't seem to be working and said although there were a couple of treatment options left he didn't recommend them as he didn't think her liver would cope. He also mentioned that her memory and confusion was most likely down to her liver getting worse.
This was 2 weeks ago. He also told us we were looking at months left.
When we tried to explain things to my mum she had forgotten her cancer was terminal, and seemed convinced she had curable breast cancer.
She's since been in hospital again this weekend following a mini heart attack. Her confusion and memory seem to be getting worse by the day and when she came home today she was noticeably much more jaundice.
I was wondering if anyone had, had any similar experiences, once jaundice starts getting bad is that a sign someone doesn't have long left? I'm confused that she seems so much worse yet the hospital have let her home, without additional care in place. I'm going to contact the hospice tomorrow for advice but thought I would ask people who have gone through similar rather than trolling through Google and falling into a hole!
Thanks in advance xx
