It is so sad, Maddie, and Sarah doesn’t deserve this. We need to be positive as Lymphoma does respond well to treatment but I know it is very hard to stay positive all the time. Sarah sounds a very strong girl and you two have definitely become closer again. You have been amazing and we are all here for you too, my darling friend 
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Oh Maddie I am so sorry to hear this. Thinking of you all. Xxx
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Dear Maddie, Reading your post was heart braking …I cannot begin to imagine how you must be feeling of having to go through this agony and the wating all over again, Sarah seems a strong girl and is coping extremely well.
My thoughts are with you and your family today. Take care …Marina xxx
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Thankyou everyone for your kind words xxxx
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Dear Maddie
I am so sorry for all u r going thru. My thoughts r with u and Sarah and all ur family at this time. Always here for u.
Lovenand hugs
Pauline x
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Hi all just need to vent really .feeling awful hate january. Tomorrow two years ago sam went to hospital in agony .covid he had to go alone he was 24 . I must explain sam wasnt worldly . He never went out with friends. His family was his life he used to say mum dont worry im happy and he was he was the calm happy voice of reason in the family. A very beautiful kind human being . They let him home the next day doing scans and giving him pain relief. Hospital rang and said could i come with him on the 13 th. 9.10. Just like that this doctor sat in front of us. Sorry sam have bad news you have cancer a sarcoma its jn your thigh .your bones and your lungs .i started crying being sick in the sink. This cant be right .we thought he had sciatica . The doctor had done bloods nothing showed. It cant be true but it was and my poor sam lasted four months, just four months.its going over and over in my mind its awfull i cant stop it . Sam passed 27th april 2021 . Why us this all come to the front of my mind the pain hospital going marsden just nightmare .just want him here it so hard living without him. This life so cruel. I just feel broken sorry for going on but i know you get it. Why are we the chosen parents for this hell i want my sam he was our superhero our giant zoe xxx
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Dear Zoe, i know its so awful. Lisa was on immune suppressants and i had got an awful bad cold at the end of Janusry 2019. I ended up with a chest infection. Consequently i stayed away from Lisa for about 3 weeks. It was horrible but she wss phoning and texting every day. Then in April she said she had a pain in her right side and had really bad vomitting and diarrhea. I should had twigged it was probably the start of something. So the following month they went off on holiday and i never saw her on her two feet again. Just propped up with three big tubes moving the blood around her body keeping her oxygenated.
The horror of seeing her on her transfer to Aberdeen haunts me still. She was in an induced coma. Her face and eyes were swollen from the fluid they were giving her, her beautiful lips were cut and bleeding from the incubator. It took the legs from under me. Then after some weeks when we had hope came the day the doctor to her and all of us that there was nothing more they could do, she couldn’t live without the ECMO machine and it was time to let her go.
These terrible images haunt us dont they. Even when we least expect it. I spoke to my sister on the phone Sunday. She is so wrapped up in her grief for her husband who was 87 btw, that she just goes on and on about how bad it feels and nobody understands!! I just said well Mollie, i held my child when she took her first breath and opened her eyes and held her when she took her last and closed them, and thats the worst thing that could ever happen to a parent, so yes i understand but you havent a clue how i feel.
I know it was heartless of me but that scene in the hospital just reared up in front of me and i was shaking with the utter terror of it.
Zoe, its the hardest thing for all of us here , living without our children but at least we have friends here who truly undersrand.
Sending love and hugs, Kate xxxx
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Intubation btw. Predictive text changed it to incubator.
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Dear Kate,
I can so identify 100% with your experience with Lisa!
Images of my Joey’s suffering keep haunting me and will pop up at any time. It’s still early for me, i know. Joey died less than three months ago, but there is simply nothing worse than seeing your child suffer so much. I miss him so terribly, every minute of the day from the moment I wake up and feel the dagger in my heart.
When they are babies and small children we can mostly take away their pain and later when they are teenagers we also help deal with their disappointments etc. It is our job to look after their physical and mental well-being. But when they are struck by cancer or some other dreadful disease, we have no control.
I was bound to my son from the moment I knew I was pregnant with him, so when he was diagnosed with cancer a year and a half ago it slowly started breaking off pieces of my heart, more and more with each horrific treatment he had to endure.: multiple chemotherapies, an autologous stem cell transplant, an artificial coma, lung operations etc. I remember looking at him in the ICU when he was connected to 16 monitors, had tubes coming out of his body everywhere and a massive one stuck down his throat to breathe. I didn’t expect to feel the way I did when he was finally sedated and then put into an artificial coma. For the first two days we had a sort of strange rest while he was intubated as at least he was not in constant distress. That sense of relief didn’t last long.
There were times during his treatment when the cancer spread more and more to his lungs, his liver, his spine and finally to his brain that I would scream out aloud because of the injustice of it all - of course never when I was with him. My role as always was to comfort him, even though he knew all too well what was coming.
I received a set of pamphlets from the Compassionate Friends, and in one of them it mentions that there is no hierarchy to grief! This is definitely something I do NOT agree with! Yes, your sister no doubt feels sad and bereft after the death of her husband, but her sorrow is normal and follows what we expect from life. When an 87-year-old dies it is not a tragedy!
Losing a child definitely is! The two losses are on completely different levels, poles apart! I have had someone say to me that they could identify with my loss as she had recently lost her grandmother! I didn’t bother to answer but simply walked away! She has no clue!
Thinking now of all the grieving mothers and fathers. There are far too many of us.
Annemarie Xxx
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Dear Zoe , my heart goes out to you and your family on this Sams anniversary , I know how difficult it will be . Sending you lots of love . Maddie. Xxxx
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Poor poor Zoe! I feel so bad for you! Your grief comes shining through your words! Cancer is a miserable miserable disease! My Joey suffered for 16 months with it before he too succumbed!
Thinking of you!! 
Annemarie
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Dear all , just thought I would let you know Today in fact right now Sarah is just starting 3 months months if gruelling chemo treatment . The hospital has reassured her that the treatment has had good outcomes . So we are just keeping are fingers crossed , that our lovely Daughter Will be fine again . The worse thing and my heart was aching , they had to sit down and tell our Grandaughter Jess who is 14 that she had cancer . She cried , but she wanted to go to school today . So that is something , I don’t know if it sank in , as I was pretty much the same age , when mum told me Dad had cancer , . But more is talked about it now . Take care everyone Maddie xx
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Thankyou Annmarie. Yes there definitely is a huge difference in levels of grief. Sometimes i want to tell.my sister to start living again for what time she has leftss she is much older than me.
She wont go out with friend’s and just gies and sits i her carby the canal where they took picnics during lockdown. Nobody can tell someone how to deal with grief but even her daughters and grandchildren are frustrated by her wallowing in grief.
For me, and no doubt fir you, having friends who love us and spend time with us mean so much and help us to realise that life goes on.
I know its very esrly days for you but you will survive this. Joey will always be in your heart and by your side fir the rest of your life. Its not the wsy we hoped or expected it to be but itvis and we just have to try our best.
Much love to you Kate xx
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Thinking of you all Maddie. Its all so much to take
In. We feel so helpless .
Sending love and hugs.
Kate xxx
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Hi Zoe
I am so sorry for all u r struggling with. We all have those times when we are overwhelmed by our grief and it just seems to appear from nowhere and slaps u in the face. Please trust that u will cope. I don’t know why we parents were choosen to lose our children. I am not religious and think god takes the good ones is rubbish. We just happen to be the ones to have lost our children for no reason. We just have to pay the price of loving our children with grief. If we didn’t love them with all our being we would not feel grief so bad. I try to think of it as a measurement of our love.
My son Conor died as a result of a car accident. Instead of the months of seeing him hooked up to machines etc i had a 7 hours. He was never concious in those hours and went to theatre and came back still alive. But when they tried to take him for a scan his heart stopped and that was it. We all suffer PTSD as a result of our experiences. Add grief to PTSD and it is not a good combination as neither will ever end.
We just have to rely on those closest to us and all of us on here to support us when we are at our lowest and feel like we can’t make it thru without our children.
Love and hugs
Pauline x
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Dear Maddie
My thoughts r with u, Sarah and all ur family at this time. There r no promises but i am sure i speak for everyone on here wishing Sarah the very best for coping with her treatment and becoming a survivor. Life is just staggering from 1 trauma to the next at the moment but it has to improve. U have to have hope.
Love and hugs
Pauline x
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Hi Kate
I agree 100% u were not being heartless. It is different when someone has had a good long life with love and comfort in that life to the loss of a young person.
Your story is truly tragic and i am so sorry for all the trauma you have endured.
Love and hugs
Pauline x
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My darling JSS
I joined this group a couple of months after my Sam passed from a brain tumour that was on December 9th 2016, and although I dont post as much as I used to, I read all the posts and I still feel connected to all the people on here, they are the ones that truly know how it feels. It is still so very early for you, I think at the point you are now I was still unable to cope and even now I talk to Sam out loud and every morning I say morning Sam to his photograph, and each evening I kiss his photo goodnight. My friends on here helped me through, even though you never get to the end you just learn that the grief walks alongside you. Maddie joined around the same time as me and God love her now has the worry of her other daughter Sarah and my heart is with her. There is no right or wrong way to grieve,and there is no time limit to it, and anybody who even thinks of telling you to move on needs to be shown the door, you need people like that like you need toothache. That is the price we pay for loving them so much. Take your own time, talk out loud they can hear you, little by little time you will learn to cope and be you again although not quite in the same way.
All my love
Helen
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Hello Maddie,
I am so sorry you are having to cope with this all. Please know that I am thinking of you John and Sarah, you are in my prayers and thoughts.
Please give me a call if you want to talk to someone.
Love Helen
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Oh Zoe,
I feel for you because like my Sam and Joey, cancer is the worst word you can hear. Joey’s mum is right when it is someone who has had a long life 87 or 88 it is different it is what they say the right order. My friend Sallys father in law was 90 and diagnosed with lung cancer, they offered him treatment but he told the doctor to use it on someone a lot younger because he had reached 90 without ever seeing the inside of a hospital, he died a few months later but like Sally and Brad his son said he had had a long and fruitful life, that is why it is so unfair for our children.
Love Helen
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