Alone Again...Well Not Really
My husband came to help me with my mom two weeks ago...and it was so much easier with him here. I didn't have to be alone with my thoughts, or with my anxiety over what my mom is going through, or how to deal with my special needs brother, and what he can take emotionally of this situation.
I took my husband to the airport at about 9 this morning and I headed home in the car with my little dog in my lap. The phone rang and it was the Life Line people and it swung me back into caretaker mode immediately...I asked them to call back and I dialed my mother in law in Boston to update her...and she cried, making me cry. It is all so huge and full of water this experience. I just loose control, swell up and spew tears...
Everyone I come in contact with while I am running daily errands for my mom - her medical needs, her doctors offices, her stomping grounds, everyone asks where she is why she is not around...and when I tell them she is slipping fast with lung cancer, everyone cries on the spot and makes e choke.
Choke.
Friday the turn happened, when we went from manageable to what the fuck. We had to use a wheel chair to get my mom into her oncologists office. This was the first appointment she has had with him since he diagnosed her on June 10th. She has had two weeks of radiation and six weeks of Tarceva, (oral chemo). She has gone from an already dwindling weight of 116 (she is 5'7") to 104. The doctor was mortified. He said in no uncertain terms the weight loss concerned him and the lack of fluid she was taking was another problem. So we scheduled a nurse to come this week - three times to administer fluids to mom via IV. She also is now actively taking the medicine that allows he to have an appetite. It worked like a charm the first day and has waned the last two days, today...she was lethargic and spacey. It was spooky. It also feels as if we are loosing her faster than I ever expected. But it is what it is. I am in this with her.
We are all suffering with cancer with our loved ones when they are ill and dying from this shit. I swear every person I see young and beautiful smoking cigarettes, I want to show them my mom in a bed, using a walker and dying for a breath. She was a smoker for 57 years. She has only been a non smoker for 22 years of her 79 years of her life. Spooky.
I took my husband to the airport at about 9 this morning and I headed home in the car with my little dog in my lap. The phone rang and it was the Life Line people and it swung me back into caretaker mode immediately...I asked them to call back and I dialed my mother in law in Boston to update her...and she cried, making me cry. It is all so huge and full of water this experience. I just loose control, swell up and spew tears...
Everyone I come in contact with while I am running daily errands for my mom - her medical needs, her doctors offices, her stomping grounds, everyone asks where she is why she is not around...and when I tell them she is slipping fast with lung cancer, everyone cries on the spot and makes e choke.
Choke.
Friday the turn happened, when we went from manageable to what the fuck. We had to use a wheel chair to get my mom into her oncologists office. This was the first appointment she has had with him since he diagnosed her on June 10th. She has had two weeks of radiation and six weeks of Tarceva, (oral chemo). She has gone from an already dwindling weight of 116 (she is 5'7") to 104. The doctor was mortified. He said in no uncertain terms the weight loss concerned him and the lack of fluid she was taking was another problem. So we scheduled a nurse to come this week - three times to administer fluids to mom via IV. She also is now actively taking the medicine that allows he to have an appetite. It worked like a charm the first day and has waned the last two days, today...she was lethargic and spacey. It was spooky. It also feels as if we are loosing her faster than I ever expected. But it is what it is. I am in this with her.
We are all suffering with cancer with our loved ones when they are ill and dying from this shit. I swear every person I see young and beautiful smoking cigarettes, I want to show them my mom in a bed, using a walker and dying for a breath. She was a smoker for 57 years. She has only been a non smoker for 22 years of her 79 years of her life. Spooky.
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