My mother in law has just been diagnosed with cancer.  She's been fit and well and had a biopsy as a precaution on a lymph node in her back which turned out to have cancer cells.  After many other biopsies, scans and blood tests she was told that she has cancer all over her body but they think it likely started in her breast but that her immune system likely fought off the primary tumour and they can't be sure what kind of cancer it is which is apparently not very common. ( and I don't understand why they can't test the cells to see but... thats why im not a doctor!)

She's been told because of how much cancer there is throughout her body, without treatment she likely has around 6 months to live but with treatment she may add another 3 to 6 months to that.  It's a total shock and we're completely devastated.  She's starting chemo on Monday to see how she reacts to it but it's a weekly dose for 3 weeks and then a weeks break so sounds horrifically gruelling.

It's really difficult being so far away from her and feeling like we're not able to help her with things like even doing errands or shopping for her or making meals but we're trying to focus on the things we can do like setting up a caring bridge journal so she doesn't need to send loads of different people updates.

She lives in the US and the other issue that I'm feeling massively guilty over is that she wants me, my husband and 3 kids to come and visit her and we absolutely want to do this but financially that's going to be a massive strain on us at the moment and i'm really not sure we can afford it and I feel so guilty about it. 

I don't know what to do for the best, i keep thinking as well that if she does pass then how are we going to even afford to fly back for the funeral?  I feel guilty thinking this knowing how difficult this is for my husband being so far away from his mum but I'm the practical one in the relationship and I just don't know what to do in this situation.  It's not something we obviously planned for and it's just a nightmare.

Anyway i'm not really sure whether i'm asking for advice, more just using this as a place to share our story and as a place to get this off my chest.

I have so many questions racing around my head at the moment.  Thanks for reading if you got this far.