May 2, 2013
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cancer is annoying
After weeks in hospital, my mum got to come home on Tuesday.
My mum doesn’t like coming home because she fears that without doctors and nurses, something bad will happen and that she needs their care 24/7.
But she doesn’t like the hospital either because she gets no sleep and she gets pretty lonely at night. I know you can’t win.
The cancer has made her pretty weak, for most of her hospital stay, she does very little walking and hardly any exercise, so now, anything that is further distance than her old hospital bed to the toilet will tire her out. We discovered this on the Tuesday she was home, she was extremely tired having to walk from her bed (at home) to the bathroom, which is double the distance to what she would normally do.
My mum was home with us on Wednesday, she looked a tad better than she did on Tuesday. However during dinner, she didn’t feel too well and her dinner ended up in a bag (she vomited it up, if you didnt get it). My dad and I were most worried, we took her temperature and figured if her condition worsened we would take her to the emergency department.
Needless to say, we didn’t have to.
And today, my mum was up at 6am so that she could get ready to go to the hospital by 8am for blood tests, lumber puncture and other treatments.
I made sure that she was well rugged up because it was extremely cold and I didn’t want her to catch anything especially considering she’s so frail and lacking an immune system at the best of times.
My dad came home without my mum tonight. In some ways, I wasn’t overly surprised. Rarely does her checkups result in a return.
This time, her white cell count was extremely low.
These things are to be expected, she does afterall have Leukaemia. But it doesn’t mean we get used to it. Everyday, it’s a new set of adjusting.
As a family, we’re slowly learning exactly how much we can cope and to see how much of our resolve can be pushed. Sometimes I think I am at the end of my tether because let’s face it, cancer really is a draining disease, especially Leukaemia. It’s hard on us – as we watch someone we love so dearly go through so much hardship and it’s hard on the patient who has to deal with all of this.
The other day, I had to fill in another endless application from my mum’s super company as she has insurance and one of the questions was “when is the expected date of recovery?” I wrote a response of “no fixed date for recovery” and cried.
I don’t know when this nightmare will end.
