crystleshoe
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Posts posted by crystleshoe
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My mom was 71 when she passed away Jan 13 2007. She smoked all her adult life and my dad also. Myself and my sisters all smoked for lots of years(1 still does) I think older (older than 30) people ask because it scares them that maybe they too will get lung cancer from smoking and younger people ask because they know all the dangers of smoking and are hoping you say no so they wont have to change their habits. My moms cancer WAS caused by her years of smoking and I tell everyone that in the hopes that if her story keeps 1 person from this hell it will be worth it. And some people are just rude and i usually just walk away from them because it takes too much energy to deal with rudeness.
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It seems that i can only take naps and not really sleep all night even though i would love to sleep for days and days. Its been 10 days since mom passed away and it seems to hurt more now than last week. I have 3 grown kids of my own, been married for 23 years and i cant believe how much I miss my mother. I feel so lost, like a part of me died with her. I keep thinking of all the pain and suffering she had to endure and I am so sorry that her last days were so bad. She was a God loving, church going wonderful woman and this disease just sucked the life out of her. I dont know how to be motherless and after taking care of her and being there for her for 4 months i dont know where to direct my energy. Tommorrow will be my first day off after the funeral and i used to spend my days off with mom so maybe thats why im all weirded out tonight. I guess ill use my time to clean and do laundry and take down the xmas tree and do all the things ive been putting off so i could spend as much time with her as possible.
My hubby will like that as he's been so understanding and patient in helping me to be where i needed to be and do what i needed to do for mom.
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im in too. With enough positive energy we cant help but help someone
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i couldnt stop watching it even though i was crying so hard.
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i am so sorry. My prayers are with you
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sorry not 1 week since the funeral its been 1 week since her death. Im having a hard time with the timeframe of everything cuz it all blends into 1 long nightmare
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Martha
Sat. was 1 week since my moms funeral and i feel like i cant even make it to 1 month so it is encouraging to me too see that you have made it 1 year. You are in my thoughts and prayers
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thanks Randy
sometimes i forget that i am not alone in my grief (though i wish no one else ever had to join me)
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Thank you all so much for your kind words and your prayers. It is 1 week today and i thought that I was doing ok but here I am again unable to sleep and unable to stop crying. It is so hard for me to come to terms with the fact that my mom is gone I fought this damn disease so hard and i was so consumed with it that now im at a loss as to what to do. I would like to do some volunteer work somehow so that maybe i can make things easier on someone else going through this and maybe it wouldnt feel like the past four months have been for nothing. If anyone has any ideas let me know. I am in Nashua NH but that is close to Boston
Thanks again for just being here, Cheryl
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Ramble on. Thats what is so great about this place, you can ramble on and on and on and someone will totally get where your coming from. I have done a lot of rambling and it really helps . Best of luck to you and your husband
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add my prayers to the list for katie
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well I made it through the day and when i thought that i could no longer manage to breath or stand my husband and kids were there to help. My dad was so strong that I am so in awe of him. The amount of people who showed up for both the wake and funeral amazes me and it is good to know that my mom has touched so many lives and was so loved. I will forever miss my mom but I know that she is in heaven watching over us. I will fight lung cancer for the rest of my life in the hopes that every day will bring us closer to a cure. My mom may have lost the battle but I think we can win the war.
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I am also sorry for you in the fact that you had to deal with such a moron. Keep up the good thoughts and know that there are so many praying for your husband. It is true... only God knows when and where a life will end and until He decides to let us know we can just keep up the fight. My thoughts are with you.
Cheryl
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I just want to say thanks for everyones words of encouagement and all the helpful info that you have all been offering over the past 4 months. Im not sure how people make it thru this awful thing called lung cancer without someplace like this. I hope that at some point i can help to support someone else and maybe make things a little easier for them.
I wanted to let you all know a great idea my daughter and niece had... for my moms wake last night they made some white ribbons with some printed cards attached that had some lung cancer facts and info on them. The girls said that they didnt want "Mimi's" passing to be for nothing and if they could inform even 1 person then that would be a good thing. By the end of the evening there were so many people wearing white ribbons and talking about cancer that i was amazed.
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I am so sorry. It will be tough for the next few days but im sure you will make it through. My thoughts are with you
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Mom is Gone
in GRIEF
I am so sorry. My mom just passed away on Jan 13 so i feel your pain. We have the funeral tommorrow and im still having a hard time believing that it is real. I feel so lost but i have a wonderful family and I know my mom would be proud of the way we are helping each other. I am hoping that all goes well for you. You are in my thoughts.
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sometimes i feel like i cant breath and that i will never make it thru the day and then something will happen or someone will say something and i know that we will be ok. I guess I am most surprised by the way the emotions smack me in the face. My husband took me out to dinner yesterday cuz hes worried about me sleepin too much and we were talking about mom and i was really ok and then he said something and i just started crying and then he was crying and the poor waitress didnt know what to do.
I know that i did everything i could do for my mom but i still have a feeling that if I just did something else or did something differant she would still be here.
We didnt get to the hospital in time to be there for her last breath and even though she was in a coma like state i am so afraid that she was scared and i am having a hard time forgiving myself for not being there.(we were making funeral arrangements) she went so quick that by the time we got there she was gone. We thought that we would have hours after we took her off the machines but i guess she was in a hurry to get to heaven. I never expected the pain that i am feeling. I dont know what greater purpose there is to all of the suffering she had to endure (and now it continues for my dad). Im just glad that her pain is gone.
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everything was turned off around 1:30 yesterday afternoon and she was gone within 45 minutes. She was ready to go and i think we were keeping her here for us. My dad is doing ok with it all, he also knew that it was time to let her go. I dont know if it makes sense for me to feel peaceful but i know she is in a better place and there is no more pain for her, no more tests and bloodwork and chemo and all the other crap that comes along with this awful dx.We are meeting with the funeral director this morning at 9:30. I dont know what to expect. I have never been through anything like this and im not sure how to plan a funeral. I dont know how we will pay for it or how much it will cost or what to dress her in or do we bury her with her jewlry or not etc.etc. etc. I guess this is another "learning experience". This has been the longest 4 and 1/2 months of my life but now that its over it seems like such a short amount of time (if that makes sense). Im kinda lost because i have spent so much time reading and researching and making calls and doing all the stuff we as caregivers do that i dont know what to do now.
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well we made the decision last nite to take mom off the breathing machine and to stop all treatments and to do no more tests to see if cancer has spread more than thought before. Mom has been unresponsive since Sun night. I feel that she has already moved on to her eternal place and that by prolonging the inevitable we are dishonering her. in the hundreds of hours i have spent with her over the last 4 months she has told me that she doent want to be kept alive on machines and such. That when its "her time to see the Lord" then shell be ready to meet him. My dad had a tough time making the final decision but he knows it the right thing to do for her. I have the strangest feeling of peace.(maybe im just numb) This has been the most difficult 4 months of my whole life and I can only hope that something good will come of it. The doctor said that it could be hours or days, there is no way of knowing how long but that she will not be in pain and she wont suffer. Im kinda lost as to how to make arangements for the funeral but then again here is a chance to learn something and see a part of life that I have never had to deal with. I will say it till my last day CANCER SUCKS!
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Well its 5am and i cant sleep again. I guess i feel like if im not asleep then the nightmare cant continue. I feel like i should be doing something... anything...but then i just cant seem to figure out what it is that i should be doing. I am so thankful for this site because without it i would just be staring a blank screen and at least here i can read and find out how othes have handled things.
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I guess there is never enuff time. I am so glad that i have had the ability to spend so much time with her over the past 4 months and that she knows i am there for her and thet she knows dad will be taken care of.
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mom is now in ICU. Her wbc was up a little but her red blood count is still low. Her platelettes are now higher so they gave her some heparin because her feet are turning purple and they are concerd about circulation.Her lung was full of fluid and she was having some distress with breathing so they put her on a ventalator. It was such a shock when i walked in and saw her that i couldnt stay in the room and i had to run to the ladies room and throw up. Her doctor met with us and told us that there is some liver damage and her lung collasped and her breathing is not good so at this point we are waiting to see if the second blood transfusion will help her. They were giving her blood when we were leaving. She is unresponsive and im not sure that she knew we were there. We needed to decide if her heart stopped did we want them to resusitate her or let her go. We decided that we have to let her go. She would hate to live like this and she had always made it clear that she didnt want to be "hooked up to a bunch of machines". My husband cant believe that i have any tears left, I am surprised if I make it 15 minutes without crying. I took today off work and I will not work tommorrow but I cant decide if i can handle another day of sitting there and watching her like this. I feel so lost and I cant even decide if I want coffee or tea. Oh well I cant tstop the progression of this awful thing happening to my family all I can do is try to make things easier on my dad. Thanks so much for listening
Cheryl
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Katie thanks so much for being here.
I just dont know how to help her or how to be there for her and not be able to fix things. I cant stand to see her suffer. And i cant stand to see my dad so afraid. And i cant stand feeling so lost and not knowing what is the right thing to do.
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well my mom didnt go for the biopsy instead she went to the emergency room at 11:30pm last nite. The doctor at rehab called my dad and said it was not a good idea to send her for a biopsy after the weekend she had. He told my dad that because she was in such bad shape he could send her to emergency or they could keep here there and watch to see what happened. I told dad to send her right away. He went to meet her at the hospital and i met him there. It is an hour drive from my house to them and when i got there she still wasnt there. She got there about 20 min later and i was outside when they took her out of the ambulance and i almost passed out because she looked dead.(worst moment of my life im glad dad didnt see it). they got her in and tried to draw blood but couldnt find a vein to work> i finally suggested to try the port a cath and that worked. Her oxygen was at 82 and they hooked her up to oxygen and that brought it up to 97. She was running a temp and her wbc was 0.6. They started blood transfusions and were waiting to send her to an ICU room. Today they did more blood and some more x rays and the x rays they did of her chest today are worse than the ones they did last night. My sister sat with her most of today. I had to come home to get my son to school today and i had to work 12-10pm. i am so afraid she will die and no one will be with her. this is a nightmare i cant seem to wake up from. How can she get so sick again so fast? How do you all cope with all of this. How do we know when enuff is enuff?
I need to vent
in CAREGIVER RESOURCE CENTER
Posted
we could go round and round with people on the causes of lung cancer (or any cancer) but the fact is LUNG CANCER is a scary word and people need to have a way to wrap their brain around it and sometimes that means they have to ask questions such as did she smoke? I know that some get lung cancer without ever smoking and regardless of the "cause" this disease sucks. I also know that my moms cancer was froms years of smoking and my dad has smoked all his life also and I am scared to death that the same thing will happen to him. No one deserves this and no family should ever have to go through the hell that we have all been through. Sure.. there are some people who are mean and rude when they ask but I think these are people who are that way in general about anything and I just dont have any extra energy to give to their negativity so if i feel that they are not really caring about me then I will just cut them off and walk away.