A couple of years ago, about 2 months before i turned 21, my mother was diagnosed with a form of cancer (originally it was misdiagnosed as something else so it was essentially allowed to progress for a year before they caught on to it) that eats away at the bones in her hips and spine and is slowly overtaking her organs, it's basically untreatable and all they can do is slow it down for a time, they gave her 2 years and it's been nearly 3 now

It's an incredibly painful disease and she is still to this day and incredible tough woman needless to say

The month i turned 21 she was set to go to a town nearby for radiation treatment and i was to look after the house and animals for the week (i still lived with my parents at the time)

The morning they were going to leave, i heard her get up to go to the bathroom and then i heard a stumble, a thump and a scream that i'll never ever forget

What happened was the heart medication she was taking basically sent her blood pressure to dangerously low levels and she'd fallen and broken her hip and she was so weak her bowels had let go where she fell, my father knocked on my door and told me she'd fallen and he needed me to help her up

So we got her up which took a in itself long time because she was so faint and in so much pain and we took her to the lounge room to clean her up, i stood there with my arms under hers while she swayed around crying for what felt like an hour, then we sat her down and we went outside to pack the car for the trip, all the meds, the wheelchair, and an array of pillows and blankets for her

After that we stood outside for a moment, i guess to take in what had just happened and for the third time in my life i saw my stoic as fuck father, from the 6th generation of an old farming family, tough fucking people, start crying, all i could do was put my hand on his shoulder and stand there with him while he composed himself

We got her into the car and they headed off and i spent that day going over what jad just happened, that night mt father called to explain what the drs. Had told him, about the blood pressure meds and the broken hip and that they'd be back in a week or so

That week passes by, i'm keeping up my end, looking after their little property while working these vile back to back shifts at work, 2:30pm-9:30pm (often getting out at 10pm because of the workload) and then a 30 minute drive home to feed the animals, then i was off to bed because i had to get up at 4:30am to work at 6am-2:30

My father called me up after that week and told me that my mother now had legionaire's disease, she'd had so many close calls that month i was waiting for the actual call, to come to the hospital and see her for the last time

In the second or third week my 21st comes by and i'm working the night and the following morning and all i wanted to do was just have some friends out for some drinks and pretend everything was normal, so they bailed on me which put me in a terrible mood, My gf at the time wanted to see me but i simply couldn't, i got out late and had to go feed everything and get ready for work in the morning, i never actually told her about the fall or much about what i was feeling at the time, so naturally she was upset thinking she'd done something wrong i guess

upset this whole time i'd kept my compsure but when i got home that night i just fucking broke down, texted my boss and explained what was going on and that i really needed the day off (thankfully they let me have it)

I think they were gone for maybe two months, when they got home she'd aged visibly and was much weaker than she was coming into the start of the year and my father was so so tired

After that month, through to last year, i spent the majority of my time drinking and getting high and all of my energy into putting all these feelings i had rolling around in into a little void where it was contained but still weighed me down, and it still does

Mum's always hinted at me that she wasn't going to be around forever, there's a strong history of cancer and heart problems in my family, i carried my uncle to his grave with my brothers maybe a month before all this happened, he died of throat cancer

she was diagnosed and survived breast cancer when i was 5 and the stressful job she worked meant she drank quite often and had pretty constant heart problems, lots of scares and such, some times she'd come and tell me something to the tune of "you have to get your life/school/whatever organised because we won't always be here to look after you" (i was maybe 16 then) but the day she had that fall the following months where we nearly lost her so many times so quickly really put shit into perspective for me, i saw all the dots joining together and did my absolute best to avoid the reality of what was waiting for me one day, maybe in my 40's, maybe in my 60's

I've been trying to get myself under control lately, i realised recently i'm absolutely not the same person i was 3 years ago, that guy seems long dead.

My mother's still alive, though i think we're approaching the day i've been dreading all this time as the disease is still slowly progressing and she's well past the timeframe the dr's gave her but she's been able to live at home and see her grandchildren starting grow up which i'm so grateful for

I'm feeling some really heavy feels atm because of some unrelated stuff and this thread came up at a good time i guess, i've never laid all that information out for anyone before so i'm sorry if it's a little scattered