Hello this is the first time I have posted on this forum but I desperately need to get this out as I have now entered the worst and lowest point in my life so far. For context I am 22 years old and have barely just graduated with a BA degree in Ancient History from King’s College London. Now at this crossroads in my life where I am trying to figure out what it is I wish to do next my mother who has for almost five years has been battling with Stage IV breast cancer, has now taken a huge downward turn in terms of her treatment.
The decline in the last two to three weeks has been immense, and a huge shock for both myself and my family. When I first found out about my mother’s cancer diagnoses of Stage IV breast cancer I had just finished college and was informed by both my mother and father in the summer of 2015. While at first I was extremely distressed by the diagnoses my initial despair was quickly replaced by optimism as my mother who is now 56 had been through the menopause and begun with hormone treatment to keep the cancer at bay moving onto chemotherapy as time progressed.
But life for the last four almost five years has been good with few bumps in the road, life did return quickly to normal, and I began to engage fully with our normal family routine. I did however make a big effort to spend more time with my mother in my gap year post college, and we both mutually enjoyed visiting National Trust properties around our local area exhausting all of them in our local vicinity. After my gap year I started university at King’s College London, and choose to commute from my home near Guildford to the Strand Campus near Waterloo.
Life as it does took on a routine and I engaged with my university course during the weekdays going to my timetabled lessons, and having the chance to spend time with my family both on the weekends and the weekdays I had no timetabled lessons. We did all the normal things we are used to doing as a family and simply got on with our lives enjoying the time we have together.
My mother before I was born worked as a nurse so has been very diligent in her own treatment managing her own drugs and staying more or less on an even keel through the treatment with the biggest physical sign of change coming when she lost her hair due to her treatment, but this quickly grew back once she had changed treatment again, and despite moments of despair my mum has been relatively positive through this.
Things in the last few months did slowly change however and my mum became more tired, and begun to slowly spend more time sleeping in her room it also became necessary for her to have more regular blood transfusions with the intervals where they were necessary becoming ever closer together. I suppose I should have seen this as a sign of deterioration which it clearly was but these changes happened very gradually and by far the most dramatic deterioration has occurred after she was admitted to hospital roughly two weeks ago with breathing difficulties.
Perhaps naively my father and I saw this as good news because we assumed she would have her treatment plan altered, and we could go back to living how we had become accustomed with my mum receiving regular treatments but able to cope with everyday life. This has not been the case despite the best efforts of the hospital and the excellent care she is receiving from the hospital the decline I see in my mother is stark.
One of the big problems we were not aware of when she went into hospital was that she was suffering from Ascites which is a build-up of fluid in the abdomen which needed to be drained by the hospital and I believe they took over 20 litres of my mother. To make matters worse my mother’s platelets are too low for her to move onto another chemotherapy after the Capecitabine has stopped working.
My father has kept the general picture of the treatment of my mother away from myself and my sister but half a week ago we were still in the delusion that all will be fine once they get her on another chemotherapy but my father on asking the doctors on the ward she was admitted to for an update we were given the picture that at present they cannot treat her with chemotherapy due to her platelets and for two weeks now she is not being directly treated with anything that can stop the progression of the cancer.
My father told me and my sister this when we got back from the hospital as we had sat outside during the consultation, upon hearing this news at home I broke down my belief in my mother’s continually successful treatment was shattered and I realized perhaps we were coming to a very serious crossroads where my mother could quickly decline if we cannot successfully get her onto another form of treatment.
We have visited my mother every day during her hospital stay and there have been good days as well as bad, my mother’s mental capacity appears to me to have deteriorated and she seemed often delirious during our visits but still able to enjoy our visits. On Friday 2nd August my mother was discharged on home leave till Monday and she is now back in hospital to have an operation on Tuesday to install a shunt to help drain the Ascites.
However these last three days of my mother being home have been horrific, her mobility is now very limited and while at home with us she has been extremely tired and again at times delirious. While it was a shock for us in hospital these last few days have been a stark reality check which have drained me emotionally, and I have been frankly an emotional wreck these last few days crying many times as I have been overwhelmed by my fear and sadness for my mother.
On the Friday my mum came home to us, we were obviously pleased to have her home we had moved her bed downstairs so she would not have to navigate the stairs but things have been very hard. The first night probably the biggest shock for me and my father was just how different she was from when she had gone into hospital, we had to help her to move round the house and though she sat with us she was incredibly exhausted.
The most painful moment was while watching TV we helped her to the bathroom and she begun to sing while in the loo while we were outside. At this moment the appearance of her personality combined with the collapse of her old self became too much for me to bear and I broke down completely with my father following. I have never seen my father cry and he is a very strong man but my upset and the condition of my mother was too much for us to handle. We did our best to hide our hysteria as we did not want to upset my mother but it was inescapable and on putting my mother to bed I could hear my father crying and I too was still distraught.
On the Saturday my mother was very tired and could only manage short stays out of her bed and no matter how much rest she had she was always very tired and it was a very bad day for us. I and my father gave her constant support getting drinks for her, and helping her to the bathroom as well as giving the best comfort we could give her. On Sunday we had a much better day she seemed more lucid and we had got a better handle on the drugs she needed to take and she seemed slightly better so we were less upset on that day.
Monday however has been probably the most horrific day for me personally, my father had to go to work and I with my sister who had returned from a weekend away had to look after my mother. I administered her drugs at 1:00 PM but afterwards she became very distressed she began to talk about how I was the light of her world, and how much she loved me and then she begun to beg me not to let her be taken back to hospital, she also repeated that it was torture and she couldn’t put up with it any longer.
I tried to reassure her that it was only for a very short time and that she would be out on Tuesday after the operation but I couldn’t calm her, I hugged her and she asked me what we had done to deserve this, and I told her she had done nothing to deserve this and tried to reassure her she was not a burden on us which she kept saying she was.
Then while I was hugging her she cried that she did not want to die and at this I broke down in front of her as it was simply too horrific to bear and I had no comfort to give for this and the very real thought of losing my mother struck me so deeply. We both cried and I couldn’t calm her, she began to ask for my father who was at work and also asked to have some Oramorph.
On my father’s return the plan was to take her to the hospital but as she was so weak she told me she could not get into the car and when my father did get back we were forced to call an ambulance and she was taken to hospital this way. To a certain extent it is a relief she is back in capable hands but she was deeply afraid of going back into hospital and I want her to come back as soon as it is possible.
But the experience of the last few days and the reality of my family’s situation has hit home very hard and I am still distraught, my father too is also very upset and I can see that he has been crying. It is like my world is being ripped apart, we are not a big family and have not really got any extended relatives it is just my Father, Mother and Sister. Over these last few days I have also become massively paranoid about my father’s health too as he has had a mole which had bled so I have convinced him to see a GP tomorrow with me despite all that is going on.
I don’t think I could face my father getting sick as well and thoughts of suicide have crossed my mind when contemplating the loss of my mother and being anxious over my father’s health too. I do want to say however that I would never do such a thing because of what it would do to my family but I think the toll this has taken on me has deeply upset me and those thoughts did cross my mind.
