The writing is on the wall in The C Word

Mum is dying.

They’re still continuing antibiotics, for god knows what reason. She’s been on antibiotics in one form or another since August and it’s done nothing for her except keep infection at bay, it’s never actually got rid of the infection.

Haematologists just don’t like to give up, and I am very qualified in saying that having been a haem nurse for 10 years. As nurses we have the ‘just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should do something’ conversation many times, and wait for the doctors to join the party a couple of weeks later. There comes a time when providing peace is as much of a blessing as medicine can be.

We feel like we’re at that point. My dad is speaking to the doctors again today about it. They’ve literally exhausted every avenue. Even without the infection she still has a rapidly progressing acute leukaemia with no options for chemo. We’re realistic and honestly, it’s absolute torture watching her so sick and slowly fading.

My brother was able to come home from
Australia with his wife and my new niece. 6 weeks old and she’s already completed her first international flight. It’s the only good thing to come out of this, I haven’t seen my brother for 3 years due to covid and we’ve been able to meet my little niece much sooner than we’d originally planned. Mum’s been able to meet the baby too, and she’s absolutely thrilled with her. She’s asked today to see V and my little nephew who’s 2. Just for a short visit and not at the same time! Hopefully if she feels up to it we can facilitate that in the next few days. The kids have been amazingly resilient, they’ve been able to speak to her on FaceTime up until the last week so they’ve seen her with her oxygen and drips and things and they’ve taken it at face value. They’re naturally curious so it’s all quite interesting to them and so far they’ve not found it scary. I think cos we’re not scared by it and answer their questions.

This entry is all over the place. It’s a bit of a brain dump, a ‘this is where we’re up to today’.

I can’t believe that she won’t be here one day soon. It makes me physically ache in my chest to think about it. She’s always been the first person I ring in the morning and last person I message at night. I’ve thought a hundred times a day about all the little things I would have told her if I was able to, she’s not been able to look at her phone for the last week or so. Stupid little things. They’re the little things that get you in the throat the most. Something in a shop I thought she’d like, something funny V said, something silly I’d read or seen on tv. Silly things about washing and ironing that are things I’d only mention to her. The woman could literally get a stain out of anything and never told me her secret. Probably just perseverance, I don’t have the same patience!

I wonder if this is what this terrible process of a slow and lingering death is for, to help you get used to the fact that someone won’t be here. The FaceTimes and messages have stopped already, my last message from her is something inconsequential about eating her tea and feeling tired. There have been no profound conversations, we’re not like that anyway. You find yourself wishing that it would just happen quicker, that it would just be over already. You’d never wish for less time with a person but you wish for their suffering to be over already. Lying in a hospital bed, a little vague because of the morphine, although much more lucid this week, it’s just not a life.

Life for mum was time with family and friends, running round after the kids, holidays, the food shop, the washing, the dog. It was busy, and happy. What’s happening now is just cruel.