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Losing My Mom to Cancer


Nbobbette

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It has been about two months now that I have lost my mother.

A little bit about my moms story: My mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2013, she had surgery and she was declared cancer free. In may 2014 she was complaining about having migranes and found a lump on the side of her rib cage. After a long process she had found out that she had sebacious carcinoma, then lung cancer which after a month of getting tests done found out it had spread to her breast and into her brain. She had stage 4 lung cancer. She had done rafiation treatments to the brain only because it had spread too much that they couldn't do it to the lung too. She then started chemo teatments. She was given 6 months without treatment or maybe a year with treatment to live. To Fast forward my father won a trip to hawaii in september and my mothers goal was to be well enough to make the trip with him. They made the trip to only have the night before they were to come home she was hospitalized. Her kidneys were failing. My brothers and I flew out ther to be with our mother and father because we didnt think she was going to make it home. We as a family had to make the decision to put her on hospice so that they could give her medications. After around 10 days in Hawaii the doctor said he would give us a 24 hour window to get her on a plane to bring her home back in california. We made it home!! She was still on hospice... Nothing was the same. She would have okay days and other days were not good at all. The cancer was really effecting her thoughts and body. My mother made it to her 56th birthday in december she almost made it till christmas but a few days sort. She had passed on Dec. 16, 2014.

I have had a very special relationship with my mother I am her only daughter and over the past few years we have grown really close. We have gotten matching infinity tattoos together and I was taking her back and forth to her appointments. I never wanted her to feel like she was in this alone. She has done everything for my family so I needed and wanted to do everything for her. If it wasnt my father taking care of her needs while on hospice it was me. The day she had passed away, I was the only one in the room with her talking to her. I wanted to assure her that she has taught her kids how to live life and was telling her that its going to be hard not having her but we will be okay and we loved her. She took her last breaths with me.

I had window paint on my car window from when we took a last family vacation that my mother wanted to do upon klnowing she had terminal cancer. It said **** cancer. While out shopping I recieved a beautiful note from a cancer survivor saying to stay positive and they will pray for us. So i had posted it on facebook saying that there are good people out there on a random act of kindness site. Someone pointed out that my car's liscense plate is 6HVN830. Crazy thing is my mother passed away on dec 16 she went to heaven(HVN) and she had passed away around 8:30 in the morning with me. It has made me feel like our relationship was something special she choose to share her last breaths with me.

Everyday has it's challanges. There is not one day that goes on that i am not missing her. Coming home is just not the same. It hasnt really hit me that she is really gone. It feels liek she is on a vacation somewhere except the fact she wont be coming back. I think daily how much I miss her, about the things I wish she could of been part of in my life. Her to plan and be at my wedding someday or to be my kids grandmother.

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My mother passed from cancer on November 13, 2014, and sometimes I feel like she's just on a vacation or just not around but will be back too.  She had been diagnosed with terminal cancer almost four and a half years ago and I obviously was so grateful to have time with her, but at the end of her life, everything just happened so quickly.  She had been such a fighter and had been doing ok, and then at the end of September, her health just started to drastically decline.  By the time hospice had come in, she was still in the mind set of fighting the cancer, but barely able to stay awake for a couple of hours each day or eat anything.  The times she was awake, no one wanted to talk about the end or her dying because she was only awake for such a short period of time that we all just wanted to try to enjoy our time with her  Then all of the sudden when she was awake, she was awake but it just wasn't her.  

 

After she passed, I took it upon myself to take care of everything.  I planned the service, gave the eulogy, contacted friends and family.  I was in such a daze.  Now, just three months later, I feel like a wreck.  I'm able to go to work and function and then I come home and just want to go to bed.  I find that I have no interest in most things.  My friends empathize with me, but I find myself getting unwarrantedly angry with them.  I'm at the point in my life where most of my friends are recently married and now started to think about children or already have a baby.  I'm not married yet, and I get so angry that my mom won't be able to experience wedding planning on being a grandmother.  When her doctor told her that she should bring in hospice, later that day she started crying to me, because she was so upset that she would be missing so much of my life.  She was such an amazing person and deserved all of those things. 

 

I know that everyone says it's going to take time, but I don't see how this ever gets any easier.  I just really miss her...

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I'm sorry for your loss mar1065. It crazy to see and hear about someone else's story of losing their mother being so closely related to mine and how I've been feeling. My mother took care of everything at our home and with the family. After she had gotten sick I took it upon myself to step in and take care of everything. Which it has been really hard doing. Not that I wouldn't do it for my family just that it would of been nice to have more help and support from them. I too think about marriage and kids which I won't have my mother there with me to share those huge events in my life. I feel angry at the fact of her not being here but not at her. I told a therapist that I'm seeing about it and she had made a good point, to not look at how she isn't going to be there physically but to think of how when those times come to think how she will be there maybe while you are thinking of her or things that will be there to remind you of her. Everyone tells me that it's going to take time too, some days are going to be better than others. I do know for me it has been that way and I think of the way my mom was so full of life and the way she would be mad if I sat around not living life. I think I'm trying to use the way she would want me to be as an inspiration to keep going to make her proud.

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I too am from Hawaii and just lost my mother on December 28, 2014 at 79 years old and my father passed on Sept 7, 2002 61 years of age.

I fully understand all of you about your feelings, I'm the only child and have no other relatives here in Hawaii, they're in Japan. It does seem like my mom's also on vacation and some part of me feels like I'm waiting for her to come back. I'm not married but my girlfriend lives in San Jose so it's tough.

The feeling of being alone is the hard part, I'm okay when I'm around other people but as soon as I get home, the anxiety from solitude comes back. I've adopted a choice to remind myself to think positive, to think what my parents would say to me if they were here with me. Stuff like washing clothes, cleaning the house, taking out the trash, reminding to get to bed so I can meet all my requirements the next day, etc.

Even though I tidied up my mom's bedroom and her bathroom, I still have problems throwing out some of the unneeded stuff like her perfume, used cosmetics and toiletry. I still have her bath towel hanging in there just because it makes me feel better.

Here's what I concluded, the pain from how you miss them won't ever go away, and I chose to make it okay because it's a reminder of how much my mother was special to me. My mother and I weren't very close because most Japanese families (where the parents are from Japan) are that way. It was kind of like a business relationship where she was my superior and I was her subordinate. I took care of my mom the best way I knew how and took 3 months leave from work to go visit her every day at the hospital. She has AML (leukemia) and from the time she was diagnosed in November 2014, she passed away couple of months after.

What I do with myself is I continue to remind myself not to relive the past, not to go thinking about the times my mother and I were together and how we shared meals with each other and went shopping. Instead I bow my head and feel glad that at least I had her until she made 79 and I wouldn't trade it for any other experience. I love my mom, and I love my dad, I miss them too, but for me to be able to live my life, I have to let them go.

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