My mother's cancer is giving me depression.

My mom was diagnois with stage 4 nueroendocrine colon carcinoma, in Sept of 2014.    She had to have much of her colon removed due to a tumor and that is how they found it,  they did a scan and it showed it had already spread to her liver.  Who knows how long she had cancer, but we think it was at least a good year before she was formally diagnoised based on the problems she was having prior.     Even though she had a colonoscopy within that time, it was discovered. 


She started chemo as soon as she was healed well enough from the surgery.  In Jan of 2015 she had another scan and it showed that the chemo was not working, the spots on her liver were 50% bigger and she had new spots on her adernal glands.   Her doctor put on her a more aggressive chemo treatment only because she did so well on the other one.

More and more she is not able to have chemo because of her counts being too low, she has already had a transfusion to bring her counts up, and that did not bring them up much but enough to continue treatment. 

She is doing really though, she still has energy some weeks are better than others and while she does have pain it's mostly at night and they haven't had to prescribe her anything heavier than what she is on,  she also rarely gets nausea but she again has some pretty powerful anti-nauseua meds in case she needs them.  In all she is doing really well, I am amazed, I thought she would be bedridden and in a bunch of pain. 

I am finding this to be way to hard.   I've had a lot of stuff happen over the years that I've been able to pick myself up from.   In 2007 I watched my father die a long horrible, painful death due to years of smoking.   That was the hardest thing I've had to do so far, my dad was everything to me, I was a totally a daddy's little girl.     But I managed to get through it somehow. 


Now I am struggling,  I've never been really close to my mom, we would always fight, we are so very much alike and stubborn that we just clash, but since this has happened we haven't foght once, we now have a much more loving relationship, the kind we should have had all these years and didn't and it took something like this to make it happen.  I feel foolish for it. 

I'm realistic, it's not like I thought my parents would live forever.  I did however think I would have more time with them, my dad was only 52 when he died, I was 27.  My mom is only 61 and she probably will not live to see 62,though I do hope she does.   It's just the nature of her cancer that leaves that in doubt. 

I feel jaded, bitter and just so very sad and angry.   Not only for me but for my brother, who is mentally and physically handicapped.   My mom is his world, his everything, when he stayed with me when she had surgery he had to talk to her every day and if he didn't he would think she was dead.   Everyday it was him wanting to go home, go home to mom.   I can't even think about what her death will do to him.   

I've had so much happen that I really would like for something, anything to go right.  My marriage is suffering because I'm not that happy person my husband married, I'm this sad pathetic thing that cries at the drop of a hat.   I barely clean my house anymore, a house I love that we brought new, that I want to keep looking nice, I just don't have the energy it seems. 

I know I need therapy, but I just can't make that call because at this point, I just want to be with my mom when she needs me, we live three hours apart and I try to see her as much as I can.  How can I keep up appointments if I need to leave to be with her?   

I'm sorry, I just really needed to get all of that off my chest.   Any helpful suggestions are so very welcome and really needed at this point.   Hell it seems my mom is taking this much more better than I am, that is kinda sad.