In March of last year, my mother was diagnosed with stage 3b lung cancer. My family doctor had misdiagnosed her as having bronchatius. My mom was actually diagnosed by a nurse, the day that she had her second doctors appoitment, our family doctor had to have emergency heart surgery. As weird as it sounds, this led to her living a bit longer (also, the doctor lived, and retired later). Her first appoitment was for radiation. They told her that if she had not been diagnosed, she would have been dead in 3 days. The tumor was putting pressure on her aorta. This created a spider Web like pattern on her chest. The doctors thought that was from her coughing. The radiation helped shrink the tumor, but also did some damage to her lungs. She then has a surgery done on her heart. They found that there was cancerous fluid in the sac around her heart. At this point, they told us that she had stage 4 lung cancer. She almost did not come out of this surgery. The anesthetic did not wear off as planned. She told my dad that she saw her mom, dad and sister. All three of them ddied years ago. She said her parents were telling her to come on, while her sister said it was not her time yet. She listened to her sister. I watched as she went through the pain of chemo treatments. Since she was in a higher dose, they had to give her a medication to raise her white blood cell count. It made every part of her body hurt. She would cry, day and night, for 3 days straight. No pain med came close to touching the pain. Then came the lung infections. The first one led to her vocal chords snapping shut. This led to her having a trach put in. For those of you that do not know what that is, it is a tube that is placed in your throat to help you breathe. This bypassed her vocal cards so she could breathe. Before this though, I walked in on the crash team working on my mom. She later told me if she died that day, she would haunt the hospital. She was taken to the ICU, and placed on a vent. The next day, she had the surgery. Before she went in, she asked me if I had anything to eat. It was 6am, so I had not. She was not happy about that at all. The same day that my mother crashed, my aunt died of cancer. It was reoccurring lung cancer. This time, she had it in her lungs and brain. She got lost in her tiny bathroom one time. She passed peacefully in her sleep. My mom's trach surgery went well, but the infectuons did not stop. It seemed like every three weeks or so she was back in the hospital. They tried all sorts of antibiotics and other therapies. They they decided that hospice was the best option. While contacting people about her being put into hospice, I found out that another aunt of mine had died. My mother was close to this aunt. She had cancer in her intestines. By the time it was caught, it was stage 4. This is the second wife that my uncle has lost to cancer. We did not tell my mother until she asked about her. This was 5 weeks after her death. While we were in the hospice room with my mom, we got a phone call from my dad's father who he did not have much to do with. My dad was listed as power of attorney and he had been taken to the hospital with trouble breathing. It turns out that he too had lung cancer. Within a week, he was dead. I've had three family members die this week. 2 were from cancer. The latest member of my family to have passed is my mother. She fought a long and hard battle. My mom outlived all of the doctors estimates. She was a strong woman, and she gave me the courage to be who I am today. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for in this thread. Maybe it can because a place where people can talk about how chronic illnesses have effected them. I mostly just wanted to get this out there. She is no longer suffering, and that is what matters. She does not have to struggle to breathe. She does not have to feel the pain of the bedsores that formed because her skin was so fragile. She will be missed by many, but her time had come.
I get you... Just this last December my uncle died after a long fight against bone cancer and my aunt died from a stroke. My dad's fighting cancer right now and I have a feeling he and my mom are holding back from telling me how long he has. You kind of feel helpless watching the people you love suffer like this.
I'm sorry for your losses. My dad has cancer and the doctors are saying that it seems to disappear and then reappear and they don't know the causes of it. Otherwise, he seems healthy enough for his age (he's in his early 70s) but he's saying he might not live long enough and just thinking about it brings me to tears. I also had a grandfather who passed a few years ago from pancreatic cancer, I believe it was called. When we came to see him all the way in Chicago, he'd gotten so much skinnier that he was just skin and bones and just the sight of him made me choke. He couldn't move without being in pain, too weak to even eat and he didn't remember anybody. He was practically knocking on death's door. The day after we moved back to NC, he'd already passed away. It took me a while to accept it and I just broke down crying. At least the good thing about it is that he's not suffering anymore and I believe that he's in Heaven along with his dog, Blackie.
Wow! Brad I'm really sorry for all your loses! (*hug*) my aunt thankfully beat breast cancer how ever another one of my aunts her husband has stomach cancer and it's been really hard on there family. My late grandfather died partially from liver cancer and a lot of other health issues. My dad had a lung cancer scare a few months ago. Thank god it was negative. I do agree with you though cancer sucks!
I'm sorry for your losses, especially your mother, given all you went through. That said, knowing the hospice process intimately, I'm glad it's over. The process that's next is you and your family's recovery from the long and arduous process.
It sucks. My mom also died of cancer, 10 years ago now (actually in less than 2 weeks it'll be her birthday, the 10th one we won't be celebrating). She actually started with breast cancer, which she was told by 3 doctors wasn't cancer before insisting on a mamogram. She caught it early enough and with surgery and some naturopathy (she tried chemo and decided to go alt medicine after 3 months) got better. Then it showed up in her lymphnodes, she had radiation, it got better. Then she started getting migraines so bad that she couldn't move. They found she had "cancer sprinkles" (not big enough to be tumors but plentiful) on her brain. The cancer eventually moved down her spine a bit too. She'd been getting better from that, like your mom, my mom was super strong. She got sent home, with home care, but the doctor perscribed her 3x the amount of morphine she should've been receiving and the mistake wasn't caught. She overdosed and I never really saw her again. I visited, but her brain wasn't working right (too high and sick). It was the most terrifying, soul destroying situation to see her like that. I think the few hours I slept after knowing she'd past were the best I've ever slept. My first reaction was just relief that she wasn't in pain anymore. The mourning was just because I miss her, but I wouldn't wish for her pain to have been extended just so I could have her a bit longer. Pain is such a bizarre thing and no one can ever understand another person's pain. But the power in just a shrug and "I don't know what to say, that sucks, but I'm here". So, feel free to message me if you need someone to talk to, and if not, just know you've got one hell of a community behind you! (You know better than me, you've been here longer )
Both of my grandparents on my dad's side died of cancer within a year of each other. So yeah, cancer sucks.
I'm so sorry for your losses, I can't imagine losing that many people at once. A couple of years ago my grandfather died of cancer too, it was the third time he had it, before I was even born he had mouth/throat cancer and the doctors gave him months to live but he was cancer free for almost 20 years, then he had prostate cancer and after surgery and radiation he was fine for a while, a few years later the prostate cancer came back and when the doctors figured it out it had already spread and they said that nothing could be done. It was really hard seeing him in the hospital because he was such an active person, but I also take solace in the fact that he is no longer suffering.
My dad was misdiagnosed with Bronquitis as well, and it turns out he had water in his lungs. Trouble breathing, trouble standing... he was in so much pain. By the time they had discovered what had happened to him, I guess you could say it was: "too late." Cancer sucks. It really sucks, and it makes me want to punch it in the face and throw it in the trash. I know that doesn't help, and truly I don't think there's anything I could say to make you feel better... especially since I haven't been through it. Just know that I'm sorry you're going through this. (*hug*)
Cancer means that you have to choose between hideous, mind-rending pain and becoming so constipated, from strong opiates, that you eventually start throwing up your feces and die from your bowels locking up. Eventually, a combination of the opiates and the effects of the cancer start to eat away at your brain like worms, and you go into a state of dementia as everything that makes you YOU swirls down the toilet, and you and those who love you can only watch in horror. The Abyss swallows you slowly. It eats you alive. Eventually, you become so demented that you have to be confined by force to a bed, and we force-feed you opiates and anti-anxiety medication until you are driven into a coma. We purposely allow you to become dehydrated because that is the only other thing we can do for your pain. We call it "natural death" because, if we didn't, even that would be taken away from you, and you would die howling in pain like a terrified animal. An article is published in the paper saying you "died peacefully in [your] sleep." It is a lie, but that is what people want to believe because they cannot face the horror of what they know, deep in their hearts, really happened. Cancer is an abomination.
i know how it feels my grandma had six stents and two catheders put in for her breast cancer but at least she is still alive even though she has diabetes and colitis, she fought radiation and chemo therapy that made her go bald but she made it through and is still alive at the age of 64 and my grandpa at 65
I am sorry for your loss. Cancer is truly a terrible disease. There are few things that I am passionate about enough to donate money for. Fighting cancer is one of them. My family has had more than our share. I have lost all my grandparents, both parents, and uncle and an aunt so far this awful disease. I had a call not to long ago from a friend (my age) who's little sister went in to the doctor for what she thought was a bad cold. She was told she had stage 4 lung cancer. She had done everything she could to be healthy all her life... I think any person or team who discovers a cure to this disease all deserve to be billionaires.
I don't figure they would object to being wealthy, but I think that having the disease beat would go down very well. All of us will eventually face cancer or something just as awful, assuming we don't kill ourselves out of our own stupidity first. Diabetes is just as bad. It can involve your limbs rotting off of your body, a little itty bitty piece at a time, and going slowly blind. It sounds so pleasant when I describe it that way. Heart trouble is not what most people think about when they think "heart attack." It's not living a "fat and happy" kind of life and then mercifully flying off one day to an eternal Disney Land in the sky. Heart attacks are more likely to maim you than kill you. A stroke can destroy parts of your brain, leaving the rest of you a terrified and confused shell of the person you once were. So don't think there is any mercy in the cardiovasular route. These are things that WILL kill you. There is not a doubt that these things will kill you. If you want to, you can spend your life trying to give the next generation a fighting chance that they might not have to face some of the more painful and horrible of these deaths.
