Friday, June 22, 2012

It's hard watching from the sidelines...

Today I arrived in Sydney, so I can go with Mum to her oncologist appointment tomorrow. Today she had a series of CT scans, so that the oncologist can compare these with the original scans taken before she commenced chemotherapy.

Mum's been in excruciating pain with her back, which seemed to get worse today when she needed to drink a large volume of water in preparation for her scan. When she breathes, it catches, and she's been moaning in pain ever since I've been here. It's been so horrible to stand by and watch her suffer in such pain, and there's just nothing I can do about it. The GP has given her Endone tablets for the pain, but these hardly even touch the sides. The heated wheat pack helps a little, but she generally finds it really hard to get any relief.

Tomorrow we go to the oncologist for his interpretation of the new CT scans. Being me (the bossy bitch that I am) when Mum brought today's scans home, I ripped open the envelope and read the radiologist's report. From what I could tell, the news is not likely to be good tomorrow. Despite what the oncologist said earlier, it looks like the pain in her back is, indeed, from metastatic tumours on the spine (two of which were identified in the scan), so I'm not sure what this will mean for Mum's prognosis, or treatment.

I guess we'll learn more tomorrow. I feel so helpless, and wish I could do more for Mum... and also feel bad that I have to fly out tomorrow night, so won't be able to stay around to be with her and deal together with whatever news we get tomorrow. 

I have this feeling that we may not have as much time as we initially thought.

1 comment:

Evan said...

Thinking of you. Seeing those we love in pain and not being able to do something about it is really awful.