Hello Feather1403,

I just wanted to give you a warm welcome to our friendly forum and I hope that others will join me soon to offer you some advice on how to deal with your current situation. It is very sad what is happening to your mum and it must be so difficult for you to process and it is normal to feel that you are left in the dark with far more questions than answers. Cancer has a habit of leaving one with lots of unanswered questions especially when it comes to determining something like prognosis. As many here will tell you, there can be a lot of uncertainty and in a way it was very honest of your doctor to simply tell you that there is a lot unfortunately that they don't know, that cancer can be so unpredictable in many ways.

We have some information on our website on the stages of cancer which will help you understand how staging works and what it all means.

I think it might also do you some good to give our nurses a call and talk it all through with them. You can ring them on this free number 0808 800 4040 Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm.

I will now let our other members who have been in your situation before come and share their story and experience with you.

Best wishes,

Lucie, Cancer Chat Moderator

Hi. Feather lucie ime afraid is right so was your dr about how long.there is no real timscale this is the cruelest thing about this rotton dieses . You can think your ok and bang it becomes aggressive on it be agressive and you can live longer than you think.trouble is all we see is charitys on tv we people saying how they beat cancer or a lady lived to see her granson grow up and it lulls us into a false sence of security i know they need to show this to get much needed funds but we dont see the other side so when it happens not like its portrayed we think why how is this why us but .my liz they said it was slow growing stage four said it was incurable but very treatable but after liver biopsie she she only lasted three weeks in fact she had stroke 4 days after chemo half paralized then sepsis took her in two days but they said it was due to cancer but to me and for her it was a blessing .but you never know .all i can say is make shure they get pallative care in place mc.millan and you gp its his duty to set this up to make your mum comfortable but theres lots of help out there for you all unfortunatly you have to to go out and ask for it. so if it was me my next stop should be gp ime assuming you live in uk and make every day count ime sorry your all having to go through this rotton disease its awful but ime only saying what ive seen i think cancer treatments still in the dark ages but thats me .best wishs . the one thing  i realy must say is make shure your mum stays properly hydrated i cant stipulate how important  this is and excercise if possible best wishs paul

hi feathers, i was diagnosed with secondry stage 4 ovarian cancer, after every scan going my primary is unknown, theres a bit of tumor left that they couldnt get, ive now been told my outcome is 10 months so was such a shock, ive started chemo but cause they dont know what the cancer is there taking a guess as to what to treat me with, im just hoping it will shrink to buy me more time so i can understand what your mum is going through, but there only going by statistics they dont know for definate,my advice is take each day at at time and live every minute of it hugs to you and your mum x

I am sorry to hear your dagnosis cancer is such a horrible disease and it just causes fear heartache pain and confusion ... thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my post and i will pray and hope your treatment works and the tumour shrinks .. thinking of you stay as strong as you can xx

ty so much feathers, i am a strong person and im trying so hard not to let this beat me, im here if you ever want to chat, let everything out and scream at the world lol x

It just scares me so much and because ive lost my dad in the past 18 months to the same disease im scared of seeing my mum go through what he went through 

We do have district nurses coming out once a week to see mt mum but sje is refusing help saying she isnt sick so she dosent need them but i can see the cancer is starting to take its toll on her .. shes so tired all the time an sleeps quite a lot .. i know sleeping is a good thing for her body to try and regain some of her energy but it just hard to see her go from full of energy to hardly any .  

I remember my mum was offered 2 differet lots of chemo at the same time but she refused one of them as she didnt want to loose her hair i even offered to shave all mine off of she lost hers but she was adamant she didnt want the other chemo so she just had the carboplatine sorry cant spell it 

If only i could go back and make her listen to me and get the 2 treatments maybe things could be different now 

I hope for the future that a decent cure is found because how cancer is portrayed isnt how it is in real life 

I just feel so broken inside at the min i just dont know were to begin to process it all but im doing research and tryong to find out as much information as i can 

Thank you all for replying to me i really do appreciate it xxx

Thank you and same to you xx

i can understand your mums point of view, shes been independant all her life and to have people comming in and doing for you must be awful, im just dreading if i get to that stage,but its good shes fighting against them shes not giving up i would be the same, i think to give in is to give up, such a cruel disease x

Hi sorry your not getting help off distric nurses but they dont cover that they have pallative care teams that deal with that they are diffrent its i scary name i felt same i rang the mcmillan nurse that was asighned to liz at the hospital she was brilliant and arranged them to come out they can deal with pain releife etc unfortunatly liz went so quick they didnt have time i rang on the wed and they rang to come out sunday but was to late liz had passed away i come on to try and help because it was to late for me but i try and give advice to people on here it was only four months since i lost liz so if i can give a bit of practical advice i do it .so hope it helps .paul

Hi the district nurses i dont think they deal with pallative care you need the pallative care team they usualy come from the hospice pallative care doesant just cover with what you think they can help with pain releif things you may need etc etc liz went so quick i rang the macmillan nurse asianed to liz at hospital on the wed she arrange it they rang to come out sunday but liz had gone by then i come on to give advice as it was to late for liz ao any help i can give i do its only been four month for me and ime still stuggling at times she was the love of my life ime not looking for sympathy just trying to help others that do have time .best wishs paul ps you should have been given a ds1500 form with that the dwp will fastrac payment each week about 84 quid for nice foods etc allso you can get disabled parking permit you have to go to disabled parking team not dwp they havnt a clue they will tell you a load of rubbish it costs ten pounds but you have to ring main concil not distric council took about a week to fast track it all but you have to push a bit