My mom is in her final days
Edit: Thank you all for the kind words. Its been nice discovering this subreddit.
My mom was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer back in January 2025. We were originally given 3 months if we chose no treatment. Of course this hit the family like a ton of bricks. She started treatment and was responding very well to it. The docs called her the unicorn with how well she was doing. She looked good, didn’t have any sickness from treatments, just cold sensitivity and some neuropathy.
After 4-5 months of treatments her pancreatic tumor was practically gone. Enough they thought she was a prime candidate for a IRE to ablate the surface of her pancreas and liver. She got the surgery and while in recovery she fell out of her hospital bed (she has a response to pain killers). She broke her shoulder, 3 ribs, and a concussion. The concussion cause a seizure. They took her for an MRI and found 6 brain tumors.
She had 5 targeted brain radiation treatments. We saw signs of shrinking. Her main oncologist suggested going back on chemo and changed her to a different chemo treatment. This chemo kick my mom’s ass. Super weak, couldn’t stay standing longer than a couple minutes without being tired.
About 2 weeks ago she was in horrible pain. She has had back pain for years, long before the cancer. She can usually pull though but this time she was twisting and turning in bed. We went to the ER, originally for back pain but they found she had a UTI. The ER staff gave her some strong pain meds for her back pain about 1 hr after we got there. This started a 5 day pain killer induced confusion on top of the UTI. Then to kick it off they found 6 more brain tumors, one at the base of the brain stem that could be causing the pain and confusion.
Well after 5 days she finally came to, UTI basically gone, pain meds out of system. The docs think the cancer may have spread to the fluid around her brain and spinal cord. They gave her 2 weeks to live on no treatment or they could try full brain radiation but would cause short term memory loss and slowness. And would only possibly give her 2 additional months.
So we are now home on hospice care. It’s really hard to watch my mother get worse and worse everyday. I had to give her the heimlich today when she choked on some food. I just hate that there is nothing that I can do, I just want her to be comfortable but if once we give the pain meds it will no more talking and sitting with her.
Fuck Cancer