The Worst Ever

Watching my mother dying from cancer has got to be the worst experience I have gone through in my life.  It was bad having her get diagnosed and going through surgery was terrifying – but this is horrible.

Some days I think I can handle it gracefully but more often than not I feel like I may evaporate or  combust.

At first I thought the experience was actually going to kill me.  Now as the days go on I realize that I will likely make it through but I may just feel like I, myself am the one that’s dying.

I’ve been thinking of blogging about this for quite a while but almost couldn’t face putting the words down.  There is so much to say I don’t know where to start and it’s so awful that I don’t always know if I can get it out.  So far the things that have sucked the most include -

• Buying what I knew was most likely the last Easter basket and greeting card for mom.
• Having my birthday that I am pretty sure is the last one I will spend with her.
• Realizing that I am 99% sure we have already had our last Christmas together.
• Buying what will be the last Mother’s day card I get to give her.
• Debating what else to give her for Mother’s day knowing that she really doesn’t need anything and won’t be around long to use whatever I got her (I settled on a plant, oil room infuser and chocolate)
• The recurrent thought and reality that she will never see or hold her future grandchildren.

Right now she’s mostly holding her own – not getting out of bed much if at all aside from using the bedside commode, showering (with help) a couple of times a week, and sometimes sitting in her recliner for a bit,  She is still eating and drinking but her appetite isn’t the same as it once was and she has definitely lost weight. Her cognition is getting worse and she often seems confused – but not the kind of confused where she doesn’t know who she is or who I am , etc. The most terrifying times have been when something goes wrong for whatever reason – once it was a bladder infection coupled with constipation, twice it’s been her reaction to morphine and one other time it was what we think is her reaction to having a tad to much of her other pain med on board – during these times she has slipped downhill rapidly – like to the point you think she may die that night/day.  She’s rebounded each time but it also seems like her baseline goes just a tad lower afterwords.

Often I think about the cancer multiplying inside of her.  I wonder where it has spread and what damage it’s doing.  I am not sure if it’s worse to not know and imagine all of the awful possibilities or if it’s better to have discouraging CT scan results telling us definitively what is worse.  For some reason I most fear it spreading to her brain.

Some days I think I can handle whatever is to come – but when we have one of these quick declines I flip out and feel like I can’t handle it at all.  I don’t get the dying process – is it going to be a downward slide where we don’t even notice each difference or will we just wake up one day and she will be totally out of it?  I dread the end lasting a long time.  I don’t want her to suffer and I don’t know how I will handle it if  I have to worry for months or weeks if “this” is “the day”.

The whole experience definitely gives me a deeper understanding of other’s grief and what people have gone through who have lost a parent- especially a mother.  I find myself seeking out those who have also gone through their mother dying – almost like knowing that others making it through this means that I will be able to as well. It’s odd to be facing this knowing that for a good deal of life this was my biggest fear.  When I was a child I used to feel almost paralyzed at times by the worry that my mom would die.  I remember in elementary school thinking how horrible it would be to be left with my father only and how I wouldn’t be able to make it without her.  Sometimes I still feel this way.  I try to remind myself that I can and will make it through and can even flourish when she is gone but I can’t shake the worry that my safety net will be pulled out from under me when she’s gone.  Although I am in my mid thirties I have always known that mom would be there emotionally to support me through anything and even that I could count on her financially.  If money was tight and I couldn’t pay rent all I had to do was ask and she’d be there.  I now worry that I am going to have something awful happen – like I will become ill or lose my job and not be able to find any way to have an income that will support me and she won’t be there to help and I’ll end up in a box on the side of the road.

Overall I feel good about our relationship and I am so glad that mom’s able to do hospice at our home.  Right now the only thing I feel like I will regret is not having asked her more questions about her past and her family.  I have a list of questions I could ask her now but I feel like she’s just not up to it and honestly I don’t know that I am either.  Maybe the anticipation is worse than actually doing it but somehow it feels like it will kill me to sit down and ask her the questions because that just makes it so.final.

I can’t bring myself to proofread this…. but now I am going to hit the Publish button… I just need to get it out there….

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