Hey

I’m not sure what I’m looking for but I’m just gonna explain my story and see if anyone replies.

First of all, I’m now 28 years old and my mum was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 as I was about to turn 24. She had a lumpectomy, chemo and radiotherapy and by the beginning of 2016 she had the “all clear” and was in remission.

I loved my mum, I was an only child raised by a single parent from the age of 7 and she was my world. I relied so heavily on her, she held me and the rest of the family together. She cried when I went on holiday and let me drop out of uni after a week because she missed me and wanted me to come home. She supported me through everything life threw at us and taught me to be a survivor. She was sweet and kind and hilarious and my best friend.

2016 was the best year, she was getting back to her old self, her hair was growing back and I moved out with my partner. In summer 2017 she called me when I finished work and asked me to come up to my uncles. I burst into tears immediately because somehow I knew what was coming. She had been on a drugs trial since she was all clear to test whether a drug to treat secondary breast cancer could help prevent it completely. She was on the trial because they offered monthly monitoring. She had been for a test at the hospital because of her back pain, and at a doctors appointment the GP told her that at her next oncology appointment they were going to tell her that the cancer had come back in her liver. 

The day at my uncles she told me “they don’t like to call it terminal anymore, it’s life limiting” and I just knew that this was it and I couldn’t breathe I just wanted to die so I didn’t have to feel this pain. She went into hospital the next week for a test and didn’t come out. She had aggressive liver cancer, which spread into her bones from the initial breast cancer, and lied for 2 years unnoticed until it showed up in the liver. I visited her a few times but she didn’t want me to see her like that, and I didn’t want to see her like that either. She was yellow and delirious and angry and not my mum anymore. 

The oncologist gave her 6-18 months with chemo, 3-6 months without. I looked at her and said “I know my mum and there isn’t a week left in her”. I saw her again 2 days later on her birthday, and then 8 days later she died. She was transferred to a hospice because she was so distressed and had to be sedated, then died in her sleep. The next day I got up early and went outside and I could feel in the air that she had gone.

I did eventually go back to work after having 2 months off and I have tried to go back to normal, even though normal is completely different now. For 2 years I’ve had nightmares about her, either that I know she’s about to die and I’m so sad and don’t want to let go, or that she is in hospital and flatlines and I scream for her (I wasn’t there when she died). They are less frequent now but still as disturbing. I used to wake up and forget that she died but I don’t do that anymore. I struggled going shopping in case I saw something she would like but couldn’t buy it for her, but that is easier now. I cry when I think about her but I can function on autopilot and not let it take over me, which I never thought I’d be able to do. 

In 3 days time it will be the 2 year anniversary of her death and I am struggling to believe that I haven’t seen or spoken to my mum in 2 years and that I can’t see or speak to her ever again. I do have my partner and some family members supporting me, but it is such an agonising and lonely experience that only my mum would be able to take away. 

I guess I’m looking for someone in a similar situation? I’ve spoken to friends of friends who lost their mothers too, and although it is good to speak to other people, I find myself looking for someone who’s story is closer to my own. I don’t have siblings to share my pain like others do, or a father figure, or anyone who loved her like I did. Nobody else in my world knows how I feel.

She raised me a strong woman and I know that I will be okay and my life will go on without her, so I don’t need someone to confirm that for me, I just want to feel even 1% less alone.

Sorry this is so much writing and thank you if you read it all.

Katie