TheBanyanTree: It never rains

[Linda DeMerle]

Dear Janice, I am so sorry.  I've also lost my mother to cancer, probably 2 1/2 months from diagnosis until her death.  Two years ago, I lost my aunt, her sister in the same way.  My aunt was another mother to me.  She weathered cancer for over 7 years until my uncle, her husband, died and she joined him, suddenly, exactly a month later.

I don't care how old your mother is, it is hard.  My mother was young and it rocked my world.  My aunt was wondering how the heck long people expected her to live, anyway, and although I, of course, knew that I would have to "let her go" because eventually she'd be taken from me, anyway and did I want to be a complete, unprepared mess or a realistic mess…we did as my mother and I did and tried to look into that future without fear. I was not at her bedside when she died, all happened so quickly with her seeming very well to in the hospital the next day and gone the following…but I felt peace.  At first.

For sure it is a journey.  I am going to be thinking of you both.  As someone said to me as I left work to race to New York to be with my mom…I hope (and pray) that it goes as well as it can go.

Love,

LL

On Sep 11, 2013, at 3:11 AM, Janice Money <pmon3694 at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

> On top of everything else, my mother is dying.  She had bowel cancer about 6
> years ago.  Follow up showed no secondaries but there was one.  It finally
> declared itself or rather, was detected, just before last Christmas when Mum
> got carted off to hospital for investigation of weight loss and several
> episodes of night wandering, the last of which involved her being found at
> 2.30am at Mt Ousley as she marched, handbag over her arm, up the F6 towards
> Sydney while wearing odd shoes, her pyjama bottoms and a light jacket.
> 
> This all happened a week or so before we were supposed to take Mum with us
> to Bermagui, where we'd spent our honeymoon, to help us celebrate our 30th
> anniversary.  Doing that would also allow my sister some time off to go to
> Perth for a wedding.  
> 
> We knew she had started wandering and were ready with plans to try and keep
> her safe in strange surroundings.  My mother in law would be coming to share
> a bedroom with her and be a familiar face in case Mum woke at night.  We
> would take turns sleeping in shifts.  We would lock all exits and keep
> strategic lights on at night.  I'd even bought some Blu Tack and 'Ladies'
> signs to put on the bathroom doors.  But by the time we got to Wollongong it
> was plain, for both medical and nursing home placement reasons, that she
> would have to stay within the system.  Only weeks before Mum had been
> talking about finding her swimming costume to bring with her on the holiday.
> Now she couldn't remember where she was or what she'd had for breakfast.
> 
> The secondary is in the left lobe of Mum's liver.  The oncologist at the
> hospital reckoned she had 4 to 6 months left.  I thought he was being too
> pessimistic.  Everything works slower in old people.  My grandfather
> survived 10 years after surgery for stomach cancer.  In young people that's
> a very fast killer.  Six months will usually do it.
> 
> But it's beginning to look as if the oncologist's guess wasn't too far out.
> The last time I visited her, in late July, I noticed that my mother's feet
> were very swollen.  Often that's a sign of heart failure, but I didn't think
> that was the likely cause since Mum has never had heart trouble.  I thought
> that maybe the secondary had enlarged enough to cause some obstruction of
> the inferior vena cava. The visiting GP had already started treating her for
> heart failure and hypertension but a week ago I heard from my sister that
> Mum's feet remain very swollen and he's changed the treatment - to what, I
> don't know.  And today she wrote that Mum's skin and the whites of her eyes
> are turning yellow.  Given where Mum's tumour is, if it's big enough to
> cause obstruction to bile outflow it's definitely big enough to obstruct
> venous return to the heart.
> 
> Tomorrow I see the radiation oncologist for a treatment planning session.
> Once a date is set for my treatment to start I'll organise a date before
> that to go back down and see my mother again.  It could be the last time I
> get that chance.
> 
> Janice
> 
>