Hi,
I’m wondering if anyone has any advice or is going though a similar situation.
My beloved mother is 66 and is in the final stage of her life after battling with primary lung cancer that has since spread to her lymph nodes, bowel and bones. She was diagnosed last year.
She chose to leave the hospice so we are now caring for her at home - I haven’t been at work for about five weeks now. There is no available care in our area so other than the (incredible) support from Marie Curie nurses and our district nurses, the immediate family are on our own.
It’s agony watching someone you are so close to and love so much deteriorate in front of your eyes.
There are two things I am really struggling with though and wondered if anyone else had the same issue.
The first is visitors. The family home can be so busy with visitors - both family and friends - that at times it feels like a petting zoo. Some of my mother’s family live in Glasgow (we are up north in Aberdeenshire) and when they visit, they stay over. I know they mean well but I find it infuriating that we have to host, to cook, to put down clean bedding and provide endless cups of tea and coffee and paint on brave smiles, and all the while it feels like they are robbing us of any quality time with my mother. When they leave, she’s absolutely exhausted and either sleeps or becomes irritable with us for doing her medicine or all the other things that need to be done. I’m aware my mother doesn’t have long left at all, weeks, possibly days, and all I want to do is be able to cry or sit with her....I’m rambling now.
It’s also having a huge impact on my relationship with my fiancé. We were due to get married on 30/09/17 but postponed the wedding as there was no way my mother would have managed it. I feel like I am taking all my anger out on him, but to myself, in my head if that makes sense. I don’t ever lash out at him but I do go quiet and moody and then he either treads on eggshells round me or smothers me with hugs and I just want to scream at him to leave me alone.
I feel like I’m a completely different person now, I sometimes feel like I don’t even want to get married....but I know if I were to talk to him about how I feel, he’d be completely crushed.
