Thoughts on Being My Mother's Caregiver

When I was married to my ex-husband many years ago, my Mom was hospitalized in her 60s and underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer. She was living with two of my older brothers and my older sister, and I knew they were responsibly seeing that she get taken care of. My mother usually visited me and my two children every Christmas for a couple of weeks, so I sent a bouquet of flowers, a card, and called her every day at the hospital.

Later that year, she came for a visit, and after treating the children and me to a nice meal, she told me that all she wanted me to promise was that I would take care of her when the time came and not put her in a nursing home. I promised that I would do the best I could to take care of her. I knew I was healthy enough at that time to undertake this request, but little did I know that a decade later my marriage would end, I'd have troubles with my teenager, and I would have serious health problems, including a couple of herniated discs which would prevent me from lifting my Mother or anything heavy.

My Mother had enjoyed good health after that mastectomy until I accompanied her into her doctor's office, and her doctor told me she had found a recurrence of breast cancer in her other breast. I had been accompanying her to her doctor's appointments, shopping, and many meals that she ate out. I was doing most of the cooking, but she prepared simple breakfasts and lunches for herself, so she was quite independent for an 86-year-old woman.

The doctor's recommendation was to go to Sloan Kettering Hospital to see a specialist. The bus ride was long, but we took the Command busline which made it more direct from Brooklyn, NY, into Manhattan. The family was confident she would get the best care there because they specialize in cancer treatment. Her specialist recommended radical chemotherapy. She said she would remove the breast after trying to shrink the cancer and later another doctor would repair the aneurism she had in her artery. I explained that I thought this might be too much for her at that age, but the family decided to take radical treatment.

After two radical chemotherapy treatments, my Mother's leg swelled up to twice its normal size, and she could no longer take her favored short bus trips to Park Slope to have a Chinese food luncheon and stop at the nearby supermarket. She became mostly bedridden. This would have taken longer, I believe, if they had just let the cancer run its course and avoided such radical treatment because she was taking bus trips two or three times weekly and food shopping right up until the second chemotherapy treatment.

That night, my brothers decided to take her by taxi to be admitted to the hospital. She was treated for a few days, and then the decision was made to take her to a reputable nursing home. I had counted her pills, made dinners and served them, and taken care of her for as long as I could. At first I felt I had failed her because she had ended up in a nursing home, but then one day she told one of my brothers that it was a good nursing home. They kept her occupied, well fed, and people checked on her regularly and kept her comfortable.

My feelings on being a caregiver now are changed. I believe that if you can be the main caregiver, that's great, but if you find the patient needs more care than you can give and there's a good alternative, that's okay too.

The family all visited her, and one day we took her out to a family party where she sat in a wheelchair. She really laughed and enjoyed herself. She lived about five more months before passing away, and she assured us that we had done the best we could. A few nurses that I knew told me they would have let her live out her life without the radical chemotherapy, but we feel we did the best we could and that she had good doctors. The important thing is that Mother knew that she was very loved!