How do you handle a close family member illness.

[Kaelissa]

Hello everyone, I am not a new poster here but all my family know my other name and while I doubt they would ever find this message board as they are not gamers I would prefer they did not find this. I made this account to post about this issue. (sorry if I am not suppose to have two accounts)

The issue is earlier this year my mother was diagnosed with sarcoma cancer.She went through 5 weeks of radiation and then had surgery to remove the tumor. The doctor said her removal surgery was successful, the radiation killed all but a few cancer cells in the tumor and they are confident they got it all. That is all good news! However...

After being diagnosed she was sent for an MRI and CT scan as her cancer is known to travel very quickly to the lungs or heart. On her first MRI she had 3 small dots in her lungs which was believed to be scar tissue and did not look like cancer. On her second scan, right before surgery she had a new legion/nodule/dot, it was very very small. The Dr. cannot tell what it is because it is so small. This week she goes for her third scan and I am terrified. So is she. Her first scan was in January, the second in April. Part of me thinks it couldn't have spread that fast between scan 1 and 2 but the other part of me is terrifed it has... She was diagnosed and started radiation very quickly after noticing a lump. During her radiation she was very sick, fever, cough, aches and felt horrible almost the whole 5 weeks with no answers to if it was viral or related to radiation. The dr. said the spot could be from her being so sick.

I consider my mother(and husband) to be my best friend. She and I are very much alike and very close. I do not know how to handle her being sick and not knowing if the thing in her lung has grown, shrunk or is unchanged is driving me crazy. I am positive and up beat around her but alone I am terrified, cry myself to sleep and am miserable. It is also compounded by the fact I have been pulled out of work and am waiting for a hand surgery and spend all day alone with nothing to do because my husband is at work and using the computer to type hurts so I am stuck watching tv all day.

So MMO, how do you deal with a family member you are close to being seriously ill? How do you deal with the possibility of losing a parent you are very close to?

[Vea Lea]

makess me sad

[Independent voter]

Yeah, don't be a downer. Try to have a normal conversation, don't ignore the progress of the disease but don't dwell on it either. Everything can turn out okay.

[Kaelissa]

Thank you! When I am with her or my father, I act normal, stay positive and just enjoy the time we have together doing whatever we are doing. I think this is just so hard because both my parents have been very healthy and I have never dealt with serious illness with someone close to me, especially one that has a possibility of not ending well. I have had other family members die but not ones that were close to me and such a huge part of my life.

[Doctor Amadeus]

I honestly can only say I would pray for you or them, or anybody in that situation because that is what I would do, along with spend as much time as I could trying to help them stay strong for as long as I could.

I am very hard to get attached to anybody, so those I call my loved ones, I will give almost anything for. One thing is for sure, MAKE SURE you SLEEP yourself as much as possible, lack of sleep and that kind of stress can do very bad things to you.

[unfilteredJW]

I anger cried and drank a lot when my mother was diagnosed a couple months ago with colon cancer. Made me realize I wish I had more friends for this sort of stuff. Don't do what I did, though. Find someone to talk with; even for someone that internalizes a lot of stuff, it helps. Spend as much time as you can with her, and realize that grieving if different for everyone. At least you have your husband and father. I think the worst thing in my adult life was asking my mom all the living will questions and having to carry around that morbid piece of paperwork till after the surgery. I'm glad I dealt with it rather than my brother; he's the baby and a rather enormous momma's boy.

Thankfully she's going to be OK, as apparently a tumor had grown around her tumor, and kept it from spreading.

I'm not stoked about getting a colonoscopy, but I'm stoked I still have my mom, and I hope you get to say the same thing.