TheBanyanTree: It never rains

[Monique Colver]

Been thinking of you, Janice, and hoping for peace for you and your Mom.

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Monique Colver
Colver Business Solutions
www.colverbusinesssolutions.com
monique.colver at gmail.com
(425) 772-6218


On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 1:36 AM, Janice Money <pmon3694 at bigpond.net.au>wrote:

> Again, thank you all for your kind messages of encouragement and support.
>
> When my father died it was for me as Linda said.  It rocked my world.
> Actually, it rocked it right off some of its foundations.  The damage took
> years to repair.  But with my mother it's different.
>
> Mum's mother was a widow for 20 years and Mum repeatedly said she didn't
> want that to happen to her.  It didn't.  She's been a widow for over 23
> years.  She's had a full life in that time but has never stopped being
> lonely for Dad.
>
> She loved to read - fiction and non-fiction - and to do crossword puzzles,
> the bigger the better.  But a couple of years or so ago she stopped doing
> both.  She couldn't remember what she'd read and she was finding it harder
> and harder to remember the words corresponding to the clues.  Then that
> loss
> of words began to affect her speech.  At first it happened only if she got
> anxious and that made the problem even worse.  It was hard to watch her
> struggling in her frustration and distress.  And then, of course, the
> problems gradually got worse.  By July her sentences made little sense and
> now she seems to have given up trying to take part in a conversation
> preferring to sit quietly and listen to her visitors talking together.  I
> really miss my long morning chats with her.  At least she still remembers
> my
> voice.
>
> For most of this time Mum still had her other love; gardening.  She was
> proud of being known in her street as the lady with the lovely garden.
>  Even
> in the nursing home, in the beginning, she helped replant some garden beds
> but now, my brother says, she's too weak even to walk out to the gardens
> let
> alone to walk around them and see how everything is growing.
>
> So I guess I would say that I think that, for my mother, death will be a
> release and I hope it comes softly, before all the physiological
> derangements caused by her tumour have time to torment her.  She's sleeping
> more now so it may be soon.
>
> Janice
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com
> [mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com] On Behalf Of Linda
> DeMerle
> Sent: Thursday, 12 September 2013 6:40 AM
> To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own
> *original* writings.
> Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: It never rains
>
>
>
> 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
> >
> >
>
>
>
>