leaving my mom

14 years 7 months ago #27220 by savvy66394
leaving my mom was created by savvy66394
hi my name is Savita and I am a caregiver for my mother, Kamla. She was found this May to have stage IV, metastatic to peritoneum and omentum with bilateral malignant pleural effusions. No other mets (that we know of). I've been on a couple times this summer. Since my last post, we've been put on hospice. She did one round of chemo (Alimta) and it darned near killed her. It dropped her platelets and she nearly bled to death, but we talked the hospital into giving her platelets. They told us she'd die in three days when that dose of platelets got used up by her body, but that was a month ago!!! Her bone marrow has recovered and she started making her own again.
But the fact remains that she has the cancer. She's in bed the majority of the day and tired of the pain. She's in pain ALL the time, and the morphine helps but then it also makes her exhaustion worse. Most of all, she's in emotional pain. She was always active and worked as an ultrasound supervisor until 5;30 the day before her diagnosis in May 2008, and is now an invalid with no capabilities to finish any tasks.
I have been here with her all summer but I am running out of time off from medical school. I have decided to go back to school this weekend. But my insides feel like they are being torn out every time I look at her and realize she's only getting worse and worse and worse. She knows it. We know it. And we're not doing anything to stop it.
My father cried to me yesterday about how terrified he is of making the wrong decisions on his own for her, of not doing enough for her. He has serious emotional needs right now and none of us can handle them because we're all so emotionally exhausted ourselves.
Does anyone have a similar story? how long does she have? I hate to admit this, but half of me wants her to have years and years, but the other part of me prayed for her to die last night. She's so miserable. This isn't her in that bed.
What are we supposed to do? Just watch her die? How do we do that? You can only joke your way out of her questions about death so many times. And no matter how many times I remind her that miracles happen, we both know that ten time more often the miracle never comes. It's to the point where i'm praying at night for none of us to wake up the next day. How long are we supposed to keep this up?
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