How Do You Know When It's Near The End?

Hello...

My mother in law was diagnosed with Stage 4 Stomach Cancer  December 2006. It had spead the the liver.

She's gone from 126lbs to 70lbs, she's 5'1". It's been a very sad long road to see the transistion in her. She's been through the chemo, to where the tumor shrunk a little. The tumor actually broke through the skin at one point to where she has a bag attached to it to catch any pus. The little bit that was on the liver is no longer there for now, but the tumor has now started to grow again so they have decided to give her radiation. Before she started the radiation she was getting extrememly sharp pains in her stomach out of no where they would come & pass.

Like most everyone else that has cancer, she's so weak right now that she cannot take care of herself anymore. She cannot do anything including clean herself after using the bathroom, which i know mortifies her, she was always someone into her appearance..

I guess my question here is...How do you know when it is near the end? I'm sure that is a very open ended question, but i don;t know if she's gonna make it to Christmas, then again there's always hope for a miracle, but you know the old saying, "Live for today, don't worry about tomorrow.."  That's kind of hard to do because you can only do so much in a day....I know i wont be able to know exacty how long but if you all could share what is was like for the last couple of days for your loved one I would really appreciate it.

Of course I want to hold onto the hope that she will get through this but I also want to be prepared for the qworst as well.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Tanya

On 9/22/2007 tanyalynne71 wrote:

Hello...

My mother in law was diagnosed with Stage 4 Stomach Cancer  December 2006. It had spead the the liver.

She's gone from 126lbs to 70lbs, she's 5'1". It's been a very sad long road to see the transistion in her. She's been through the chemo, to where the tumor shrunk a little. The tumor actually broke through the skin at one point to where she has a bag attached to it to catch any pus. The little bit that was on the liver is no longer there for now, but the tumor has now started to grow again so they have decided to give her radiation. Before she started the radiation she was getting extrememly sharp pains in her stomach out of no where they would come & pass.

Like most everyone else that has cancer, she's so weak right now that she cannot take care of herself anymore. She cannot do anything including clean herself after using the bathroom, which i know mortifies her, she was always someone into her appearance..

I guess my question here is...How do you know when it is near the end? I'm sure that is a very open ended question, but i don;t know if she's gonna make it to Christmas, then again there's always hope for a miracle, but you know the old saying, "Live for today, don't worry about tomorrow.."  That's kind of hard to do because you can only do so much in a day....I know i wont be able to know exacty how long but if you all could share what is was like for the last couple of days for your loved one I would really appreciate it.

Of course I want to hold onto the hope that she will get through this but I also want to be prepared for the qworst as well.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Tanya

Hi Tanya,

       Sorry to hear that your mom-in-law has stomach cancer.  My mom threw up green bile constantly since April 2007 and passed away end of June 2007.  She was on TPN for nutrition, had swollen legs, had so much pain, skin peeling that she would bleed, wore diapers because she couldn't contain her poop and urine, in so much pain that there wasn't a place on her that didn't hurt, and the like.  My mom went through so much torture that I didn't think was possible.

The best thing you can do is keep your hope up and stay positive around her.  Give her the best care possible, give her your all your love.

I'm going through the same thing with my pops which is VERY hard to endure.

I have the same question. The doctors don't do a good job covering this, at what point do we stop all the treatments and just try to help our loved ones get a comfortable ride into the sunset?