Just had the devastating news yesterday that my mum is going to lose her battle with cancer. She was diagnosed in May last year, roughly 2 months after symptoms first appeared. It was stage 3 when first diagnosed but stage 4 by the time any treatment started and is a particularly aggressive cancer, starting in the cervix and spreading to the bladder and beyond.
She has been through living hell for the last year and even before her own cancer we lost the family dog to cancer as well as my gran (On my mums side) also to cancer albeit at the ripe age of 98.
Since my mums diagnosis she's had nephrostomy bags which has zapped any quality of life and things have gone from bad to worse. She first started getting treatment in August last year - just the normal chemo followed by RT. At first it worked and the tumours showed signs of shrinking. However the last half of her treatment plan did not work and she's had several problems since. We were pinning our hopes on some new treatments that we were going to get on private but just yesterday we had results back from the latest scan to say it was too late for any other treatment and my poor mum only has months left.
I am devastated beyond belief and it is all I can think about. Even if I manage to distract myself for a few minutes the pain comes back in waves that makes me think it is better not to distract myself as the reality comes back even harder. I have a little boy who is 2 and is my first child and my mums first grandchild, she is 65 years old and was about to move on to the next chapter of her life which was to involve a lot of travel and spending quality time with her grandson and that has now been cruelly taken away from her.
Since my boy was born we've had covid to contend with and this has robbed her of many memories and time with us all. I have an overwhelming feeling of sadness and depression and just don't know how I'm going to cope for the next few months where I'll need to try and be strong for everyone and try to get on with my life in the face of all this. I could just about manage when there was hope, but now that's gone I'm lost.
