In January last year my 77 year old mum had a mastectomy and lymph nodes removed. She had 15 sessions of radiotherapy which ended at Easter and was told she didn't need any other treatment.
About 3 weeks ago she developed a terrible cough with some breathlessness on exertion. She had an chest xray on Monday 30/12 and our GP phoned today to say that something has shown up on her lung so he will be referring her to the hospital for further investigation.
My aunt, her sister, (75) was diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year but after 1 dose of chemotherapy she developed abscesses and infections on her liver, gall bladder and several other organs. To cut a long story short she went into hospital in June and never made it home again. She died at the beginning of October, a week after being moved to a hospice. My mum is adamant that she will not have chemo and is doubtful about radiotherapy as she had a lot of adverse side effects from the course she had last year. I totally respect her wishes even though I am devastated at the thought of losing her. I am single with no children and have always lived with mum as I have some health problems. We do everything together from shopping to holidays so I will be lost without her but I am not so selfish as to push her to have treatment for my benefit. She dreads the thought of spending the rest of her days in hospital like her sister and says she would prefer to receive palliative care at home. We have a large extended family so caring for her will not be a problem.
I know it is possible that she doesn't have cancer again but our GP suspects that this is the case so I'm trying to prepare myself. I don't really have a question but if anyone has experienced something similar then I'd love to hear from you. I learned the hard way when she had breast cancer not to google symptoms so at this point I don't know what medication etc is available to help minimise her suffering. Our GP prescribed a fortnight's course of steroids and even the first dose has really helped her breathing so that's a good thing but I don't know what else she could get.
This forum really helped last year even though I tended to read more than contribute. It has helped to write all this down so thanks for bearing with me.
