A weak ago my 88-year-old mom came home from the hospital being cared by hospice, which she does not know, I told her they're just regular nurses. I'm confused because the doctors did not tell me what stage she's at and I asked hospice how long she has and they said they did not know. I received the report and the diagnose is colon ascending invasive moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma.
Mom is weak. I need to help her up from the hospital bed to take her with a wheelchair to the bathroom, which is not very far, she doesn't resist sitting in the wheelchair for longer then ten minutes if I take her for a spin around the house. She's not really eating that much and nothing tastes good to her. In the beginning of the week she kept asking me when she was getting better that she wanted to walk at least around the house. Now for the last two days she's been crying and saying she wants to die, that she can't believe how she ended up, how long she'll have to be like this. I try to encourage her to take day by day. I'm always with her I sleep next to her. We only had one nurse visit and the nurse said she's not at the end for now. I don't know what else to do, sometimes she gets pretty stern saying why God did this to her. I know we're not God, but I wish I would know what's expected. I'm the only child without help from anyone I'm getting depressed and anxious.
Are there any explanation out there?
My experience with my mum was very similar to yours. She was diagnose with the same condition, the doctor's advised a course of radiotherapy sessions for a month and the second week she started with backache, then became bed ridden and everything rapidly progressed for the worse until she died six weeks after that. The doctors didn't want to do any tests to find out the stage of the cancer because she was poorly, they never said how long she had left, no clues about anything and when she died it came as a shock because nobody was expecting her to die so suddenly.
Her heart gave up, because she had a weak heart and there was a lots of stress due to the pain and frustration because she became bed ridden and she could not handle the situation well. The doctors couldn't predict anything and were shocked when they heard. The way the oncologist explained to me is that when they are elderly they have other health issues that can go wrong aside from the cancer, The cancer triggers and upsets other organs and they die from something else. I don't think the cancer ended my mum's life, it was her heart. Nobody can tell you anything unless they stop eating completely and even so if they have a strong heart they could live longer in that situation.
The doctor comforted me by saying that her dying from heart failure was the best thing that could have happened, as hard as I might find it to understand. If my mum would have stayed with us longer things were going to get a lot worse (bed sores, feeding by tubes, agony) and the suffering with have been very hard for her and for us to see.
My advice is to reassured her and be with her, I had imagined my mum's end of life was going to be with all of us around her, reassuring her that everything was going to be fine, I already had a picture in my mind and I was preparing for that moment which me and my family thought it will take a while, she was still eating the day she died, but how wrong we all were.
After reading lots of histories from family members about people dying from cancer I found that it's quite common for them to die unexpectedly which is very upsetting.
You have my full support, if you need any help do contact me.