I don't know what I'm hoping to achieve posting here, I just need to offload even just a small piece of this.
My mum started coughing in late 2019, with a dry cough that sat in her lungs. We had a lovely Christmas, but she couldn't shift it right through to February 2020. Then one day she started coughing blood.
She called me early March, when I was still living abroad, to tell me she was sorry to do this to me but she has lung cancer. It was everywhere in both her lungs, and surgery wasn't an option. She was 61 and had never smoked.
Lockdown happened, and she and my dad spent it alone, as the cancer spread through to her liver and her bones. It was a lonely, painful time for them, and I was stuck hundreds of miles away.
As soon as we could DH and I sold our home, and moved into a rental nearby in England. DH got a new job, and my work moved me to the London office. My dad started to lose weight, we thought it was the stress. Medical professionals wouldn't come out to the house, I could never understand why.
My mum just got worse and worse, with a first fall that showed lesions in her brain and a second fall that put her in hospital with a broken femur. During that second stay we weren't able to visit for a while due to a covid scare on her ward.
For a week after we'd finally got her home she was in agony. She would bleed from her surgery wound where they'd put a pin in her leg, she had terrible oedema that caused puddles to pool around her feet, and she couldn't walk unassisted. Her skin turned green, and she struggled to breathe. I finally called everyone I could - hospice, district nurses, macmillan nurses - and begged them to finally come out to the house because you wouldn't leave a dog like this. They came, and there was talk of a short hospice stay and a syringe driver. But she died that night, after sedation from the out of hours locum because she was in hysterics. I had to help the undertakers with her body, and make the funeral arrangements.
A couple of months passed, and my dad lost more weight and turned yellow. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just after new year.
It's spreading now, despite chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and he has stopped eating. He's emaciated. I spend my time travelling between his home and mine, terrified he's going to faint when I'm not there.
It's just me and my DH looking out for dad, there's no-one else. It's been a carnival of pain for months, and the future doesn't hold much light