Caring for my mom

In July my family will celebrate my mother's 1 year no-cancer-versary. As July quickly approaches, I find myself thinking back to the 9 months during my first year of university that I spent as a caregiver for my mother as she went through diagnosis and treatment for stage 4 Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a type of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

When you think of a healthy, active person, you think of my mother. She ate well, exercised and took excellent care of herself. So it was quite a shock when we found out she had stage four cancer. My mother was diagnosed in early winter of 2008 and began treatment in January 2009. Over the next 8 months she went through multiple rounds of chemo and an autologous stem cell transplant. Chemo was difficult, as it meant lots of coming and going from the hospital, lots of blood transfusions and hospital stays. It can be very difficult to watch a loved one cope with an illness, but you do the best you can with what you've got. Sometimes that was spending long hours in the hospital together watching tv and chatting, other times it was making soup just the way she liked it and sometimes it was just sitting together in silence. I was lucky enough to have a wonderful family who worked as a team to care for my mother and a great support system that kept me going and made sure I was doing alright.

As a caregiver, it can be all to easy to let yourself fall by the way side. Between school, work and your family it can be easy to let yourself slide down the list of priorities. Sometimes your day is just so long that you can't stand the thought of going to the gym, even though you should, and you are just too tired to go out with friends, even though it would probably make you feel better. I was guilty of putting myself last on the list, to the point where I made myself sick from stress and fatigue. It was the wake up call I needed to start putting myself first. And you know what? After I made myself priority #1, I became a much better caregiver and a much happier person. Though my family is happy and healthy today, the lessons I learned during my mother's illness will stay with me forever.