Hi. I lost my 17 year old daughter 4 weeks ago and I’m utterly broken. She had a short battle with an aggressive cancer. We spent her last 5 months in hospital around the clock with her and can’t unsee or unhear the awful things she went through. On top of the shock and heartbreak of losing her I’m massively struggling with the trauma surrounding her illness and I feel I may be dealing with survivors guilt as well. My Dad then passed away 9 days later. I was with them both when they died. It’s his funeral tomorrow and I’m dreading it.
I’ve lost a child previously nearly 6 years ago ( my 28 year old son ) and I was just coming to terms with that but my daughter’s death has now utterly broken me. She was my youngest and my only daughter.
Don’t really want to go down the medication route as it hasn’t helped in the past. Waiting for grief counselling. Just don’t know how to cope.
I am so sorry for your loss. I lost my son aged 47 in July 2023 within 3 months of secondary bone cancer. He had special needs,but was so kind and loved life. They could not find the primary at first ,then about a week before he died they said he had a small 20mm ulcer on the lesser curve of the stomach. No symptoms until April pains in hips and spine. Some of these cancer lay dormant for years and unless they have symptoms are so very hard to find . The trouble is the pancreas,stomach etc there is no screening test . We can only hope there will be a time when there will be screening .Thinking of you
Thank you for your reply. I’m so very sorry for your loss too. Cancer is an awful disease. To watch our loved ones battle it then to lose them is beyond cruel. My heart goes out to you.
Oh my darlings x I can’t say it gets easier because it doesn’t it gets different , I wake up every morning and think here we go again, another day and I’m still breathing ! And for why? My hearts broken, I’ve already gone 2 years ago on the 22nd of this month when I lost Christian my gorgeous boy x my world x I’ve just had cancer secondary with unknown primary ! My husband Christian’s dad has bad Copd ! He keeps falling ! In the last 12 months I’ve had my cancer Brent has had two bad falls, in intensive care with 12 broken ribs on one side and a dislocated arm x I said for FFS! Our boy is allying for one of us ! But you see our story is different, Christian our gorgeous boy had Duchenne muscular dystrophy and on the 22ng February aged 25 yrs our Beautiful boy left us x well now he wants us back ! That’s the way I’m looking at it x
Every night I say night god bless gorgeous boy x love you x see you in the morning x mummy x like I did every night he was alive x. I pray for my “one sweet day” “Mariah Carey “. God bless xxxxx
My husband has Copd to as before we lost my son he had a small cancer nodule removed. My son so enjoyed life , always smiling and he loved people . Why does God always seem to take the good . Then again perhaps he thinks they are too good for this troubled world . 
Toomanycats, I am feeling exactly the same about my daughter having suffered. My beautiful Sarah passed in October, and the trauma of experiencing what she suffered, so terribly, compounds the grief. She had suffered for months, but her last few days were torture for me to watch. I don’t know if these images and memories will ever leave me, I do want to remember all the good times, but all I see is her pain and suffering, and the frustration that I couldn’t do anything about it. Life is so cruel.
Hello @Toomanycats
I lost my daughter 18 months ago, she was 21. She had leukaemia when she eight, then again at 13 then she was diagnosed with a brain tumour at 20. I totally understand your trauma. Having lived the most of her life terrified I might lose her, watching her suffering through chemo and radiotherapy, always smiling and thinking of me and trying to shield me from her pain. She fought so hard to stay with me, we were so close, I never left her side through all those years and you would think I would be prepared for her loss but my god it was brutal. Nothing can ever prepare you for that.
I feel like I have lived through a thousand trauma’s … each time she was diagnosed, each prognosis, each shortening of the odds … and then the final moths and weeks. Each new symptom, knowing this time it wouldn’t get better.
I don’t think I will ever not feel the anxiety, the nausea, my heart racing and the black pit of sorrow. I know I will never function as a ‘normal’ human ever again but I accept that because that is part of my grief and my grief is my love for her.
I’m so very very sorry for your loss and what you went through. Our children are absolute warriors and I’ll be forever humbled by all their strength. I try to draw on that to get me by day to day but I’m half the person my daughter was, what she went through was nothing short of torture and it’s haunting every minute of my day. I keep having flashbacks and reliving the awfulness of it all. The conversations with her oncologists were always bad news, never anything optimistic and I’m reliving that too. We hid the fact that my daughter was terminal from her. She didn’t know how bad things were which was also exhausting as not everyone was on board with this until I threatened legal action to conceal it. Now I’m second guessing myself, was it the right thing to do ? Would she still have been as brave as she was if she knew the awful truth ? It’s all just going round in my head every minute of every day. I miss her unbearably.
This is so heartbreaking to read, I’m so very sorry for the loss of your girl. The pain and trauma of watching our children suffer feels unbearable. It goes against every instinct we have as a parent. The guilt is terrible too. When I had to leave the room 4 hours after my daughter died I could barely do it. We had lived in that little room together for months, sleeping, eating, chatting, watching tv, playing board games, doing our nails etc and then things went rapidly downhill after her 3rd round of chemo and we lost her within days. Walking away that night and leaving her there alone was horrendous. I still dream of that room and the guilt I feel being able to walk away from it when she never could.
My son was 47 ,but he had a learning disability .The doctor wanted to tell him he had cancer and was dying my. I said don’t tell him, let him enjoy the time he had left. Towards the end he did realise he had cancer.I remember him saying to a young doctor am I going to die, she said very kindly not at this moment you are not.
He accepted that and with a big smile on his face welcomed his friend who had come to see him
So awful that you’ve had to deal with all of this. Your poor son.
I felt it was kinder that she didn’t know but it was heartbreaking when she spoke about getting better and her future plans. She knew her cancer was incurable and she’d never get to ‘ ring the bell ‘ but she thought the chemo would get it down to levels where she would get some quality of life back but that never happened. They told us at the start of her treatment that she had two years at a push but barely got 2 months. She was also misdiagnosed after laparoscopy surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. They said it was endometriosis ( even after seeing it ) but it was actually Stage 4 ovarian cancer. It’s all so heartbreaking.