I'm not really someone who often starts new threads on forums and it actually will be my first one on GAF at all, but today was a bad day for me and I really need to write this down somewhere; Neogaf seems like the best place to do this.
It all started three weeks ago, when my mother suddenly had a seizure while she was at work. She started to feel queasy, was barely able to make it to a chair and just wanted to drink some water when it started. Thankfully she works in the Neurosurgery department of a hospital, so she was treated as an inpatient immediately and was still around people she trusts and who care about her. Two days later I got a call from my sister. She was asking if everything's okay with me and if I could sit down. She was trying to control her voice, but I could hear her crying and at first I thought that Mowgli, our dog who just turned 15, must have died. Than I got the news about our mother: "Mother had a seizure, MRT and CT images show a shadow within her brain- more peripherally, thankfully. There is the possibility it could be an abbess, but a brain tumour is more likely, because of the lack of inflammatory markers in her blood. She will have surgery on Monday or Tuesday".
I was shocked and confused. My mother just called the evening before and seemed perfectly fine, not like she was lying in a hospital bed and just got that first diagnose. Later I learned that she wanted to tell me, but couldn't bring herself to do it, after I told her I was grocery shopping.
After the conversation with my sister I called my best friend (who succeeds in calming me down in every situation), was packing some stuff in a rucksack and took the next train to my hometown. Together with my sister, I visited my mother later that day and we all cried together.
The next few weeks I was starting to get optimistic she could be healed completely. At that point it was already likely to be lung cancer, because she is a chain smoker and there was a shadow they found on an image of her thorax. On the other hand, they found no other metastasises in her whole body and the brain surgery went perfectly fine. They could remove the tumour without problems and didn't damage any of the surrounding areas (speech area and left motor cortex). I was overly optimistic, maybe even naive. Two days later I witnessed her second seizure which was really awful, because we all were scared it could be a stroke or cerebral haemorrhage, which may happen so close after surgery. Thankfully the surgeon who operated her was around, took care of her and took another CT image of her head immediately. It was a throwback for my mother. She was so, so scared, had sudden problems with the pronunciation of words, got depressive the days after and lost a bit of her fighting spirit. All of that was only temporarily though. Last Friday she was allowed to go home, full of hope, because one surgeon told her her lung tumour would be most likely operable. We celebrated her 51st on Sunday with the whole family and had a lot of fun for the first time since all of that started. Then, today, the pneumologist was calling and told us, they will not operate and that she will get irradiation and chemotherapy instead. My aunt asked her pain therapist to look at my mother's hospital discharge letter and he told her my mother doesn't need to stop smoking with that diagnosis any more. I just googled and only 5% of all patients with inoperable lung cancer are alive five years after disease outbreak.
I never felt so helpless in my whole life and even though I managed to stay strong before my mother was going to bed, I can't stop crying now that I'm alone.
I just needed to get that off my chest. I will try to sleep now and will come back to that thread tomorrow.
It all started three weeks ago, when my mother suddenly had a seizure while she was at work. She started to feel queasy, was barely able to make it to a chair and just wanted to drink some water when it started. Thankfully she works in the Neurosurgery department of a hospital, so she was treated as an inpatient immediately and was still around people she trusts and who care about her. Two days later I got a call from my sister. She was asking if everything's okay with me and if I could sit down. She was trying to control her voice, but I could hear her crying and at first I thought that Mowgli, our dog who just turned 15, must have died. Than I got the news about our mother: "Mother had a seizure, MRT and CT images show a shadow within her brain- more peripherally, thankfully. There is the possibility it could be an abbess, but a brain tumour is more likely, because of the lack of inflammatory markers in her blood. She will have surgery on Monday or Tuesday".
I was shocked and confused. My mother just called the evening before and seemed perfectly fine, not like she was lying in a hospital bed and just got that first diagnose. Later I learned that she wanted to tell me, but couldn't bring herself to do it, after I told her I was grocery shopping.
After the conversation with my sister I called my best friend (who succeeds in calming me down in every situation), was packing some stuff in a rucksack and took the next train to my hometown. Together with my sister, I visited my mother later that day and we all cried together.
The next few weeks I was starting to get optimistic she could be healed completely. At that point it was already likely to be lung cancer, because she is a chain smoker and there was a shadow they found on an image of her thorax. On the other hand, they found no other metastasises in her whole body and the brain surgery went perfectly fine. They could remove the tumour without problems and didn't damage any of the surrounding areas (speech area and left motor cortex). I was overly optimistic, maybe even naive. Two days later I witnessed her second seizure which was really awful, because we all were scared it could be a stroke or cerebral haemorrhage, which may happen so close after surgery. Thankfully the surgeon who operated her was around, took care of her and took another CT image of her head immediately. It was a throwback for my mother. She was so, so scared, had sudden problems with the pronunciation of words, got depressive the days after and lost a bit of her fighting spirit. All of that was only temporarily though. Last Friday she was allowed to go home, full of hope, because one surgeon told her her lung tumour would be most likely operable. We celebrated her 51st on Sunday with the whole family and had a lot of fun for the first time since all of that started. Then, today, the pneumologist was calling and told us, they will not operate and that she will get irradiation and chemotherapy instead. My aunt asked her pain therapist to look at my mother's hospital discharge letter and he told her my mother doesn't need to stop smoking with that diagnosis any more. I just googled and only 5% of all patients with inoperable lung cancer are alive five years after disease outbreak.
I never felt so helpless in my whole life and even though I managed to stay strong before my mother was going to bed, I can't stop crying now that I'm alone.
I just needed to get that off my chest. I will try to sleep now and will come back to that thread tomorrow.
