I Am Losing My Mom
My mother was diagnosed with stage two lung cancer twelve months ago. And now she is dying. I'm 27, she's 53. We are both too young for this. She wont be there when I get married or see me be a mother myself. I lost a baby to a miscarrage four years ago. I know my baby Hope is waiting for her Nana in heaven, but I'm not ready for them to meet yet. I have never had a stellar relationship with my mom, and with the cancer being in her brain, and so much of what makes her, her being gone already, we will never get to fix that. Too make things worse, my brother moved right after her diagnosis four hours away and my sister lives three hours away. All the treatments, drs appts, dealings with the insurance companies, hospital visits and overall caretaking and emotional support has fallen to me. Thousands have come out of my pocket for medicine, co-pays Andy mothers living expenses. I have worked and cried and sweat and struggled alone with this for a year. Alone. I knew she was declining. I questioned the drs. Googled and stalked forums and boards looking for answers. Now, my mother is probably in the last weeks of her life. She sleeps twenty hours out of twenty four and is alert for about one of those. My sister is just coming to terms with out mothers imminent death and is turning to me for support. I have nothing left to give. I feel like a hollowed out shell of myself. While she was living her life and pretending that this wasnt happening, i was supporting our mother, working 40 to 80 hours a week and putting aside my own life and responsibilities. She can't help me now and im still alone dealing with the emotional ramifications of all this. In the last year, have had one car break down, wrecked another, struggled to make ends meet and relied on my room mate to pick up the majority of the slack financially at our house. I'm broke, I'm broken, and i have nothing left in me. No love, no happiness, no feeling. Im just tired and numb with periods of despair. I have no one. My parents have been ill since I was in high school. (my mother with lupus and depression and my father with lung and heart disease and schizophrenia) I have never married, I have no one to be there for me and I feel alone. Like I'm drowning in a sea of everyone else's sorrow and no one can hear my screams for help over the roar of everyone else's pain. I've battled depression since 8th grade and I feel this is enough to push me right back into the depths. I won't make it out this time.