Pandemic limiting support we can give

[Blowingagale]

I have posted elsewhere, but wondered if anyone here can empathise.

Covid has severely limited the help I/my family can offer to a close relative who is facing end stage of cancer. We would have done so much, or just been able to physically be there to help with basic tasks. I am the relative’s age but can’t drive so minimal use (live 300 miles away). The situation would always have been very hard but not like this.

Relative would have had closer family there as well.

I'm in the same (similar) boat, OP. Quite a bit further away geographically (not in the same country), and I'm a lot younger than my relative. Relative has no family at all there. It's really difficult. He has been using whatsapp but his messages seem to be a bit confused lately.

Normally in these situations if we couldn't go and visit a relative in hospital ourselves we would at least be staying in regular touch with a spouse or offspring and getting updates about their health from them instead. But going through the person themselves, through bloody whatsapp......while that side of modern technology has been great before now, at this stage - god, it's awful. There are too many unknowns and too much guesswork involved. How near the end is it? It's upsetting seeing messages end oddly and not knowing what has happened.

So I fully empathise, OP.

@CurlyhairedAssassin
Thank you. Timing I don’t know. There is the hope that a further treatment (bone marrow transplant) might work. It’s a bit hard - the others, including the relative all have medical background so they know what things mean. Actually I think it genuinely is hard to say.

We are trapped in a nightmare. If we go down then I have no idea what to say - those basic difficulties of what to say to someone seriously ill are not taken away by Covid either.