Caretake Who?

What do you do when your caretaker is overwhelmed and does not know who they should choose to take care of? My mother is my caretaker. She has taken a leave from her job to look after me because with the cancer in my brain spreading as fast as it is, there is no way to know how much time I have left. I also find that lately I am having dizzy spells sometimes when I try to walk, do I need someone here to support me. I just need her here right now to help me with basic things like help make breakfast, take the garbage out, and laundry. The little things that I am starting to have difficulties doing because they are too heavy or they are too much.

We found out about 3 months before I was diagnosed with breast cancer that my father also has cancer. I do not talk about it because it is his cancer and it is not any of my business to talk about. I chose to go public with my cancer so that people can get a glimpse of what my life is like and how I deal with the daily struggles in my life. If he wants to talk about his, that is his decision, not mine. I will say this so though, his is not as bad as mine and they told him when we went for our initial family group meeting with his nurse practitioner that he will likely die of something else other than his type of cancer.

These past few months with me getting worse have been hard on my family. My father’s other health issues have worsened and on top of all this my father had a bad fall and required surgery on his spine. This fall has caused his other health issues to be seriously aggravated. So, for months my mother has been trying to determine who she should be looking after. This decision is overwhelming for her and at times almost too much for her to handle. Now with my father having fallen, this decision has become even harder for her. I realize that it is hard and it is not a decision a person should have to make. Look after their only daughter until she dies or look after her husband of almost 45 years until he does. I can not imagine what it would be like making this decision. At times, I imagine she would like to run away so she does not have to deal with this decision.

At this point, to be blunt, it is hard to know who will die first and I am finding that even at the age of 38, I find myself asking my mom if he is going to be ok. I know no one can answer that question and even if she tells me he is going to be ok, it is not exactly a lie she is telling me, it is just something that I am being told to make me feel better at the time and said to give me comfort. The stress of all of this is making my mom overwhelmed to the point that she does not know what to do. She does not know who she will take care of, me or my father at this point. She too is afraid that he is might die. It does not matter because either of our deaths will devastate her. I do not know what I can do for her because physically I cannot help her do the things she needs me to help her do and emotionally I can try to be there to support her but this cancer and the treatments for it make things hard because with them come exhaustion. Right now, there are so many emotions being tossed around that it is hard to know what is going on and I do not know what to think or how I am supposed to feel. I am trying to support my mother and listen to her concerns about my father but mentally and physically, I am so worn out and I cannot even begin to imagine how my mother is doing.

With her not being able to drive in the city, she has not been able to go visit my father. We have not been able to go into the city to visit him yet so she feels like she has abandoned my dad when really, she has not. We had decided to go visit him as a family with just me, my brother, and my mother to begin with. Now for various reasons, my mother and I were not able to risk visiting him as promised because of my having cancer. Which is making my mom’s feeling that she abandoned my father grow even more. The longer we wait to visit my father, the more emotions are coming to the surface.

The longer my dad stays in the hospital, the harder it is for my family to function. We don’t know what to do and we feel we are running out of options. My dad is so confused right now that it is hard to know what is going on with him. I am getting exhausted and overwhelmed. My mom is also getting exhausted and overwhelmed as well to the point where she cannot function. Throughout this whole cancer process I have always tried my best to be upbeat and to keep my spirits up but the more stress there is in the family, the more emotional my mom seems to get and the harder it is for me to be positive seeing all of this. It is like she is on an emotional roller coaster and it is a very hard thing to watch.

I do not have any advice to give my mother over which of us would be a better use of her time. My dad at least has friends in the area where he lives. I literally moved to  a new town and into the condo I rent after I was diagnosed with cancer so I do not have any friends here in town. I only know my brother, his family, and my doctor. Right now, my dad is in the hospital so of course she is staying with me but there will come a time when she will not be able to put off making her decision. I know that my dad keeps telling her to look after me because they agreed that she would look after me because I needed the help more than him and like I said I was in considerably rough shape to begin with and I definitely needed the most help between the two of us but it seems like since I started to get worse that he started to get even worse than me to the point that he’s now in the hospital and we do not know how long he will be in there or how long it will take for him to start healing. This is not something you can just flip a coin over.