My 80 year old mother in law has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She’s had symptoms for months, but they’ve not been properly pursued, cutting a very long story short she has several mental health disorders, dementia and cognitive impairment and is in a care home and under section. She has a history of making up stories, manipulative behaviour and refusing to eat so no one realised there was a significant problem until the past week when she started vomiting blood.
GW
She was taken into hospital on Friday where they’ve undertaken various tests and scans. The result is a 9cm tumour on her pancreas which is pressing on her stomach, metastasis in her liver (two tumours there). Symptoms are the vomiting blood, diarrhoea and weight loss and last year sudden onset of type 2 diabetes.
The doctor said she isn’t eligible for chemotherapy or surgery as she is very frail and said palliative care is the only option. I’ve tried to look at how long she has left to manage my husband’s expectations but it all seems very vague. Also what we can do to help her in a practical sense. She hasn’t been told her diagnosis as her cognitive impairment and dementia mean she won’t be able to cope with the information and she won’t be able to retain it. Oh and any tips on how to get decent communication from the hospital as she won’t understand or remember what they say to her directly (but we work full time and have two children so can’t be there all the time!).
We can’t get an answer on how long she’ll be in hospital but she’s on an antibiotic drip for something (possibly unrelated as she gets lots of infections) so perhaps a little while. We’re hoping she can return to the care home soon as it’s much nicer and they have a nurse (it’s also a nursing home).
Any advice whatsoever would be great. We’ve been through the mill with erratic behaviour and the mental health section last year, followed by all the diagnoses associated with that and are rather worn down!
Hi pixie12 and a very warm welcome to the online community which I hope you'll find is both an informative and supportive place to be.
I'm sorry to read that your mother-in-law has recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
I'm not a member of this forum but noticed that your post hadn't had any replies yet. Responding to you will 'bump' it back to the top of the discussion list again and hopefully some of the forum members will pop on to share their experiences with you.
As you know, the online community is divided into different support forums so you might also like to consider joining the supporting someone with incurable cancer forum as you'll then connect directly with others who are supporting people with an incurable diagnosis.
To join, just click on the link I've created and, once you've joined, you can start a new post in the same way as you did here and join in with existing conversations by clicking on 'reply'.
It would be great if you could put something about your mother-in-law's diagnosis and proposed treatment into your profile as it really helps others when replying to you and also when looking for someone on a similar pathway. It also means that you don't have to keep repeating yourself. To do this click on your username and then select 'Profile'. You can amend it at any time and if you're not sure what to write you can take a look at mine by clicking on my username.
"Never regret a day in your life, good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience"
