by eleder » Thu Aug 11, 2011 3:52 pm
You should be eligible for your state's "high risk insurance pool" for health insurance. Has your family looked into that option? She should also be SSDI - social security disability and medicare.
I am very sorry for what you are going through. I do not wish to cause you pain, but the cancer has metastasized (spread throughout the body). It is Stage IV. Your mother is going to die. I am very, very, very sorry that this is so.
My sister has lung cancer, so I really do know what you are going through. Hers has also metastasized -- it started with oral cancer, and she had a surgery to remove her lower jaw and large portions through her neck. She uses a feeding port in her stomach to eat, and her nose no longer works. She has a lump in her lung which is getting larger. While I am heartbroken, I know that she is in tremendous physical and emotional pain, and it is not going to get better. It is going to continue to get worse. While I selfishly want to keep her here with me, and it will hurt me to have to let her go, I know that she must win free of her pain.
There comes a point in such a journey where death becomes a respite from pain.
I understand that you do not want to give up hope. But, if hope has given you up, please try to be happy for your mother that she will finally be free of the pain. She has led a good life. She has an absolutely wonderful son who loves her VERY, VERY, VERY MUCH, and there is no greater gift that a son can give his mother.
It is part of the natural rhythm of our existence that we are born, we live and we die. Doctors will keep cutting and charging you money as long as you keep saying you want it, but in the end, doctors don't have superpowers. When cancer has taken hold, they can only hold back the tide for so long.
Love your mother for as long as you have her. Be thankful for the time that you have had with her. And, when she does go, be happy for her that she is free from the pain. More $50,000 surgeries are not going to change the outcome, as sad as I am to say it. It may give her a little more time, but at the cost of great pain, and financial devastation to the family that she loves.
If the hospital has offered you the opportunity for counselling, please give it a try. I have used counselling at difficult periods of my life, such as when my own father was dying of lung cancer. It really does help.
I am so very sorry for what your family is going through.