Progress Report in The C Word

I realise I haven’t updated since I don’t even know when.

Mum had her diagnosis of secondary MDS in August last year. She had her bone marrow transplant on New Years Eve (honestly the most harrowing 6 weeks of my life to date), and was doing well, but her condition relapsed in August this year and she’s now considered palliative.

She’s awaiting chemotherapy but has had recurrent infection over the last few weeks due to her shitty immune system, including a lengthy hospital stay for antibiotics and oxygen. The hope is that with the particular chemo she’ll be having that it’ll give her years rather than months, and will actually control her disease and help her to feel better than she is currently.

I don’t even know where to start with how I feel about this. I mean it’s pretty self explanatory, we’re a close family, mum and I are particularly close. It’s the most horrific news that could be delivered, bar the death of your child I think, the untimely demise of your parent. She’s 58, it’s no age.

It’s been incredibly difficult watching her so poorly, especially over the last couple of months. Her quality of life has so rapidly diminished, it breaks my heart. We’re hoping that with the chemo she’ll actually feel more energetic and able to get out.

I’m incredibly stressed, every day seems to bring a new issue and I’m trying to juggle V, work and holding it all together. I don’t feel like I’m doing any of the things very well, I’m pretty much hanging on by a thread. I have a couple of nights away in London with a friend in a couple of weeks and whilst I’m not a praying person, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Mum is well enough that I feel comfortable leaving V with them for a couple of nights.

Her specialist today has started her on some steroids in the hope that that will help improve her cough/cold - official diagnosis was RSV. All of her bloods and multiple chest x-rays have been normal which is both reassuring and frustrating as it doesn’t point to anything that can be specifically treated, they’ve basically just said it will clear up over time, which isn’t very comforting when time is of the essence.

Essentially we need to try to expedite her recovery so that we can get the chemo started.