u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852

I wanted to share my mom's story for long time as this subreddit has been source of so much information, and hopefully that someone can learn from our mistakes. My mom has almost never been sick, I think her brain could not comprehend resting as a concept, even after she retired she convinced my dad to buy a small weekend house so she could have a garden. And then I had a baby 2 years ago, her first grandchild, and I do not lie when I say I bought exactly zero things, she was choosing and buying closets, strollers, clothes, everything, traveling between my home country (Bosnia) and Germany, where I lived for last couple of years. That brings us to November 2025, when my dad broke the hip and we all had to take care of him while recovering, he brought some virus from hospital and my mom cought it and could not bounce back. She started losing weight and feeling weak so my sister(she is a doctor) forced her to do some blood tests and they discovered increased sugar and the biggest mistake was finding an endocrinologist that diagnosed my mom with type 2 diabetes and put her on Ozempic. This woman ordered no additional tests for a 72 year old woman diagnosed with sudden diabetes. When my mom started throwing up and feeling horrible we convinced her to quit after 2 shots and she was put on normal diabetes medicine. My sister ordered more blood tests (liver and pancreatic parameters) but they were fine. This is our second mistake, we didn't push for scans since she was scheduled for them in February. Next 2 months my mom complained about not feeling well, nausea with some food, but everything was shoved under newly diagnosed diabetes. Plus winter clothes, big sweaters, my dad didn't notice she was still losing weight, and i could not see it from video calls. She was also increasingly depressed. Couple of days before her scheduled scans she got jaundiced and my sister brought her to the hospital where she needed a biliary stent, biopsy was done and it was diagnosed as PDAC, locally advanced, in less than a week, beginning of March 2026. For additional genetic testing, we had to send material to US, where we found out about KRAS g12d mutation. Scans showed no metastasis, but surgery was not possible due to artery involvement, ans we sent the images to couple of clinics across Europe, which I am glad we did, though they all agreed was not operable at the moment. The chemo was chosen to be Gem/ab as my mom was weakened by this stage, and she was receiving reduced doses. At the time I moved back to my parent's place and would travel 2 weeks there 2 weeks back to Germany, along with my toddler, as I had some months left of maternity leave since I went back to work after 10 months. My sister moved in with them. Our hope was surgery or to keep her alive until the miracle drug comes more widely available to Europe. I did however got in contact with couple of clinics for additional alternative therapies (t-cell vaccines) and they offered a spot but as soon as my mom started with chemo (march 2026) she became to weak to travel. And here is our I think biggest mistake, we focused on food. My mom didn't struggle a lot with nausea, more with diarrhea and it took us time to fix it properly with creon, but she ate 5 small meals a day and we were giving her supplements both through albumin and other infusions, as well as vitamin D, omega, calcium pills. She was not losing weight. However we dropped a ball with exercising. My mom decided she didn't want to go out except for chemo, and even with a nurse she would barely exercise, she just wanted to be in the bed. We didn't know how dangerous cachexia would be. From the first moment she did not want to know any prognosis, so my sister was the one doing all medical appointments, we were full in board for keeping her delusional (my father once joked and told her that since his driving license was valid 4 more years they have at least 4 more summer vacations, she got upset , she said you would have me live only 4 more years). She wanted the time with her granddaughter so so much. We would tell her how medicine changed for pancreatic cancer, stories like for my father in law that had Whipple and is alive 9 years later (though he lives in Spain and had access to better healthcare). We didn't feel the need to have some last conversations since we have never had a day not talking and we really spent a lot of time together so we focused on her being positive. We also shielded out father, in our culture is common for children to take care when parents get sick and doctors basically gave all information to us. The follow-up scans were ordered for the beginning of June, though they did test CA levels couple of times (they were shrinking) and usual blood work to see if she could receive the chemo each cycle. She completed that first round but developed ascites. We hoped it would be solved by diuretics and protein increase, but instead the scan showed progress of the primary tumor, though no distant metastasis. Here my mom went to hospital and is still there more than a month later, with one complication after another. She has been completely bed bound last 3 weeks, with catheter in place and being fed though TPN, by mouth she only drinks some water and takes a bit of soup. My country does not really have a concept of hospice, but the doctors which are my sisters colleagues have allowed a private room for her where we can visit and sleep with her. We know we are close to the end, as she is also having less and less lucid moments for the last 2 weeks (mistakes me for her mother and so on), but they told us they have no predictions as her heart is very strong. So now we wait, as I think due to her being in a hospital with some care does not match the usual timeline. Every day now I have my toddler call me a mom, and then I go to visit my mom to have her call me the same. I am so angry at myself for not catching it earlier, I just wish I could give years of my life to my mom, so my daughter would remember her. I hate it did not happen at least couple of years later so we get that drug here as well.