Family & Friends of Cancer Patients Support Group
This community is dedicated to parents, siblings, grandparents, other relatives, friends and caretakers of cancer patients. It's difficult to find a safe place to talk about caring for a loved one with cancer, and so this group serves as an open forum to foster positivity and support for those going through this tough time.
I just got a call from my sister that my Dad will be admitted to the hospital palliative care unit tomorrow - they don't have a bed today or he would be there now. This will be a tremendous relief for my mother as she has been caring for him herself and he is getting worse every day.
A bit of background:
Dad was diagnosed in Nov. 2008 and had a softball sized tumor removed from his lower intestine. They also found a spot on his liver around this time. He did chemo and in May was declared cancer free. By August he was feeling poorly and losing weight quickly - the cancer was back in his liver. He had surgery to remove 1/2 his liver and more chemo. In Nov. his shoulder was very painful and tests showed he had bone cancer in his shoulder only and there was still a spot or two on his liver. They didn't say much about the liver except they couldn't do surgery again so they focused on the shoulder and did radiation. Saying that after that they would do another CT scan and decide how to procede with treatment (chemo, pills, radiation).
To make a long story shorter he has developed dementia, is on an expensive cocktail of drugs and is still getting worse and weaker and more disoriented... he just wants to die and is refusing any further treatment - he is almost 75. It is hard to take but I know he could never get back any quality of life at this point and my mother is burning out. I'm sad but not extremely so... I think I'm numb which is good right now. Not feeling anything is better than what I went through yesterday. I just hope I don't shut down again and stop feeling anything like I've done before. I just want this to be over.
A bit of background:
Dad was diagnosed in Nov. 2008 and had a softball sized tumor removed from his lower intestine. They also found a spot on his liver around this time. He did chemo and in May was declared cancer free. By August he was feeling poorly and losing weight quickly - the cancer was back in his liver. He had surgery to remove 1/2 his liver and more chemo. In Nov. his shoulder was very painful and tests showed he had bone cancer in his shoulder only and there was still a spot or two on his liver. They didn't say much about the liver except they couldn't do surgery again so they focused on the shoulder and did radiation. Saying that after that they would do another CT scan and decide how to procede with treatment (chemo, pills, radiation).
To make a long story shorter he has developed dementia, is on an expensive cocktail of drugs and is still getting worse and weaker and more disoriented... he just wants to die and is refusing any further treatment - he is almost 75. It is hard to take but I know he could never get back any quality of life at this point and my mother is burning out. I'm sad but not extremely so... I think I'm numb which is good right now. Not feeling anything is better than what I went through yesterday. I just hope I don't shut down again and stop feeling anything like I've done before. I just want this to be over.
Hug for you and hang in there,
JK
Before my dad died of cancer more than a year ago now, he asked about some aggressive treatment that might give him a few more months but could kill him and would be quite invasive. He was already bedridden at that point and just enduring one day after another. I told him that frankly I wouldn't want anything to give him three more weeks of what his days and nights were like, let alone three more months. (We were unable to control his pain and it was awful.)
Your ups and downs, even some guilt along the way, are all very normal. This is no way for your dad to go on and on, and it's torture for your mom. Numbness is not a bad thing; when we're taking action in a situation, we're often able to table our own feelings to be able to help others who are leaning on us emotionally. You sound fine to me.
My heart goes out to you and your whole family. What a heavy stage of life this is. We're never really ready to say good-bye to a parent.
It was a traumatic day for everyone. No one will go visit him because we're all so mad that he put mom through so much and then pulled the suicide threat to draw the attention back to himself (he's done it before)... she has stood by him for 50 years; for her to walk out at that moment was monumental. His own siblings won't even go see him. Once he is in palliative care I'm sure we'll all feel better about it.
I'm doing better today. I've come to a certain peace within myself about the situation because now I know it will never be what we've been going through for the last couple years. We'll have other struggles and challenges but mom is safe and dad is safe and that's all that matters at this moment.
My best wishes to you and your parents.
Hugs, Gail