*Please note that I am going to leave out personal or private information. I was my mother’s caregiver too. In the beginning there wasn’t any test that forewarned us mom had cancer. It was just a typical evening and my dad had noticed something on her neck. She had long thick hair and I dont know how I missed this lump on her neck. But dad asked me to look at it and I just knew what it was. So, in the morning I called her doctor and got her in the same day. We ended up getting a biopsy which took time. It was stage 3 cancer of her neck. This is an aggressive form of cancer that tends to be fatal. But we got her into a really aggressive treatment plan which worked and she went into remission. We thought the worst was behind her and us. But and there’s always a but. She had a CT scan and it had developed in her lungs. So back into more chemotherapy and now we were talking immunotherapy. We went to this patient education appointment on this immunotherapy and I honestly felt like they were trying to either sell me a timeshare or crack. Which made me extremely uncomfortable about mom doing this treatment. But mom wanted to try everything and I respected her choice. Even when you have a medical power of attorney you dont get to do what you want. But I had a lot of power to make sure things were done right. Getting the treatment was a challenge. The medication costs 100k a year per patient. But there’s things like grants that can cover costs if insurance doesn’t cover all of it. I am going to stop here and pick up on the next post.
