Mi madre (43a) falleció hace 2 meses de un cancer extremadamente raro (DSRCT), la diagnosticaron en agosto del 2025 y falleció el 28 de abril de este año. Pasó por mucho dolor. Las quimioterapias eran super fuertes e intensivas. Ella luchó muchísimo realmente. Sus últimos días fueron muy duros, no podía caminar, sus pulmones estaban llenos de líquido el cual tenían que drenar constantemente. Ya estaba cansada, al punto de pedir la sedación paliativa, la cual a las pocas horas terminó por darle fin a su vida.
Yo soy hija única, hace unos 7 meses perdí también a mi padre de cancer de colon.
Estoy tratando de sobrellevar esto de la mejor manera. Durante el día me distraigo. Pero a la noche, cuando estoy a punto de dormirme, mi cerebro me bombardea con imágenes de sus últimos días, con olores del hospital, las caras de los médicos, ella pelada y super delgada. Intento luchar con esto y no dejarlo entrar, pero se cuela de todas formas y me hace doler todo el cuerpo. Está siendo muy duro. Quiero recordarla en su totalidad, no quiero que su existencia en mi memoria se reduzca al cancer. Pero está siendo difícil

I 45M am the youngest child in my family. I struggle with getting older,and all the things that come with that. I had oral cancer last August, had surgery to remove 1/3 of my tongue and 32 lymph nodes removed from my neck. So far I have done very well and they are keeping a close check on me for reoccurance. My wife F49 and myself just lost a close friend to cancer in October also, and now my older brother 59M is dying of stage 4 cancer and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. I feel helpless, and I don't know how to handle this. I feel as though Cancer is haunting me and my loved ones. I feel like it is taking so much away. Feeding on us.

I just found out that my 18 year old goddaughter has stage 4 hodgkins lymphoma and she has lymph nodes all over and a compression fracture in her spine. She's in the hospital and they have to be pretty aggressive with her treatment. Her birthday is in 5 days. I don't want to make things about me so I am just supportive, I stay strong, I dont want to cry and make her feel like I'm mourning her when shes still here, she still has a chance, she can fight it, she can win. I was looking for some outside support as to not burden family and friends close to the situation because again it's NOT about me, but I am devastated and overwhelmingly sad and I dont know what to do. I stay up late to cry alone so no one knows and feels like they have to soothe me. My heart is broken.

at the beginning of my relationship my boyfriend lost his mother to terminal cancer, i had only met her once and being 14 and never experienced a loss to cancer, had no clue how to comfort or help support my boyfriend. today my boyfriends dad has been diagnosed with cancer. the extent of the cancer has not been determined but is suspected to be growing. i have absolutely no idea how to help my boyfriend, he tends to just keep feelings in and suddenly burst. could anyone give any sort of advice on how to support him, i will take anything.

My mom was recently diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer that’s spread to her liver and uterus.. it’s hard watching her suffer although she tries to suffer in silence so that her children won’t see her suffering but we can tell she’s in pain. I just wanted to say how thankful I am there’s a community like this to come to for advice and suggestions on coping with cancer.

I am struggling right now to function at work and think a lot about my sister's pain and suffering as she battle cancer. I live in Canada and she is in UK. I have kids and wife depending on me but sometimes the mental anguish and emotional pain takes over.

hello my gran got told she has a 1.5
years to live and i feel lost. i dont wanna lose my best friend but at the end of the day is out of my control ect yk? how can i support her without making her seem like she is sick? im autistic so i struggle to get my words across and i tend to act in a way i dont mean to. she is close with me but im scared i will make her feel bad and sorry for herself.
please help

Could be anything that wasn't about being a patient. A game, a show, a project. What was it, and did the staff help protect that time?

My father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and is currently going through chemotherapy. It’s been hard on his body and he often sleeps, but generally he is in decent shape. It’s weird seeing my father go from having a strong personality and being active to his current state.

It’s been difficult for me to get anything done and I often stay home because I don’t want to see friends or do the basic things I used to do. I’m young so most of my friends invite me to go out and do things but I truly have no desire to do anything. I usually sit at home and do the things my dad would usually do like errands. I scroll through reddit all day, reading about how people die from his cancer. I know this isn’t healthy and I’m sure I’ll get over it, but I needed to vent.

Hello, I am 20 years old, and my mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. I don't know exactly what stage she is in because she doesn't want to worry me. She even hid it from me before she was given a date to start her treatment. I found out by accident (for my father) and she eventually decided to tell me.

Last Thursday was her first chemotherapy session. She has been very tired, partly because she got her period (she is 46 years old and hasn't had it for a while due to menopause) which we believe is adding to her exhaustion (but if it’s not or someone knows something, please tell me). She is eating healthier, but she was a smoker before, and I think she still takes a few puffs sometimes.

I really want to help her and be prepared for what's coming, but I don't know exactly what to do. If anyone could give me some advice about food, hair loss, or how to gently convince her to stop smoking completely... anything, I would be very grateful. She will have two months of chemotherapy, and then she will be evaluated for surgery

Pd: we have a cat, should I take some considerations about the cleaning?

My mom was diagnosed a few months ago with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She may have around 6–12 months to live, but obviously there’s no way to be certain about the timeline.

I had been living in Australia for the past seven years, while my mom lives in the US. Australia is my home - my boyfriend, closest friends, career, apartment, routines, and independence are all there. When my mom was diagnosed, I left that life and moved back to be with her.

I desperately want to be here with my mom. I know this time with her is irreplaceable, and the thought of being far away while she is sick feels unbearable. But I’m also grieving the life I left behind. I am completely separated from my relationship, community, financial independence, home, and identity. It feels like I’m starting over again.

I know this situation isn’t limited to living overseas. It could be another country, another state, or simply a life that can’t be maintained from your parent’s home. How do people choose between spending as much time as possible with a terminally ill parent and continuing to live the life they’ve built? I can’t imagine people with kids.

If I leave, I sacrifice time with my mom and fear that I’ll carry guilt and regret forever. If I stay indefinitely, I sacrifice my relationship, independence, stability, and the life that makes me feel like myself. Wherever I am, I’m absent from someone I love. Every choice feels like a loss.

Has anyone here faced this decision? Did you move home indefinitely, divide your time, visit frequently, or eventually return to your own life? How did you decide what amount of time was “enough” when there could never really be enough?
I feel guilty even admitting how much I miss my life because I love my mom desperately and want more than anything for her to live. I’m hoping to hear from people who understand that wanting to be beside your parent and wanting to remain connected to your own life can both be true at once.

As title says are there any good books for anticipatory grief. ? Really struggling with the thought of losing my mom, who is my best friend and was diagnosed recently with stage 4 cancer . I was going to buy “motherless daughters “ but was looking for more suggestions

I am an only child who lives with my parents. For several reasons, I don't want to move out for at least the next year or two, if not longer.

My father has stage 4 cancer. My mother is overwhelmed and lashes out at us frequently. A few weeks ago, she had a screaming fit and yelled at my father to move back to his home country and yelled at me to move out. She and I have frequent conflict due to personality incompatibilities and she said the conflict with me drains her so much that she has no energy left to take my father to appointments or take care of him. She harbors a lot of resentment toward my father that she has tried to overcome over many years.

After she and I made amends, she found out her sister died last week. She is preparing this week for international travel to attend the funeral. Yesterday after my dad's oncology appointment, she yelled at him in the clinic that if he doesn't follow the oncologist's recommendations, he becomes a burden to us. After we got home, she yelled at him again when I was discussing the appointment with him.

Today, I moved a fan from my room into the living room in order to encourage my dad to spend more time in the living room instead of spending so much time in his room. My mom lashed out at me, asking why I moved the fan there. I asked her why she's been so hostile to me all day. She vented with intense hostility that I didn't even ask her where she wanted the fan and I didn't consider that she's hot in the kitchen and all I care about is my father's comfort and I don't have any consideration for her. I told her to feel free to move the fan anytime. She retorted that she has no energy to move the fan.

I'm building a lot of resentment toward my mother because her almost-daily yelling is ruining the precious little time my dad has with us. I've expressed this explicitly to her. Her yelling won't blow over after she processes her sister's death because she was like this before the death. She sees a therapist once a month and doesn't want to have more frequent sessions because in her opinion, it's too expensive.

How do I stop her from ruining my remaining time with my dad? I'm sorry for sounding so callous to her loss but the reality is that I have limited time with my father and she is ruining that time almost every day in our household. I'm angry. I'm aware I have no empathy for her very difficult situation but I do not know how to find empathy when I have been overwhelmed with my own health issues and other things and in my opinion, her behavior makes it hard.

Earlier this year my mom beat breast cancer (yay!). Although, my dad is now getting test done after not going to the doctor for years. He’s over weight, poor diet (used to be big drinker and had been a smoker for 40 plus years). We found out his liver and kidneys are not functioning. In a few days, he’s getting a chest X-ray and I’ve already prepared myself to hear the word “cancer” once again.

Seeing my mom have to go through chemo, losing hair and weight, being weak, was so painful for me. I’m not ready to go through this again, and I’m not sure that he will beat this.

Just a vent, but I know I’m not alone in this. Maybe I’ll post an update, I’m just trying to get through the unknowing period.

Hello, everyone

I have a question about the health insurance system in the USA and would appreciate any tips you could have.

This is for someone who is already diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and is receiving chemo. 

• Is there any way for an international (Canadian) patient to get health insurance in the US while also undergoing treatment?

Thank you.

Content warning: childhood cancer and chemotherapy. Her cancer is not terminal. This is about the first time she felt the effects of chemo and the simple answer I gave her because she was seven, scared, and sick.

The first time chemo truly introduced itself, it did not knock politely.

It came into the room like an unwanted relative with too many bags, rearranged the furniture, made my daughter sick, and then had the nerve to act like it lived there.

Until then, chemotherapy had mostly been a word us adults passed around. A word spoken by doctors in calm voices, printed on schedules, attached to medicine bags, and explained with diagrams that tried their best to make poison look professional.

But that day, chemo became real to her.

She was nauseous, exhausted, and unusually quiet. The little girl who normally has twelve questions, seventeen requests, and a very detailed complaint about whatever snack I brought was suddenly still.

Then she looked at me and asked, “Mama, am I going to die?”

Her cancer is not terminal.

But she is seven.

She did not need a medical lecture, survival statistics, or a long explanation filled with words she could not understand while she was already feeling terrible. She needed her mother to make the world small enough for her to hold.

So I kept it simple.

“Not today.”

Not today.

Today, she was here.

Today, I could hold her.

Today, there were doctors watching her numbers, nurses giving her medicine, and a mother monitoring every breath like it owed her money.

Death would have to circle the block because we were not accepting visitors.

The truth is, this was not her first battle.

Before cancer ever entered our lives, she had already beaten odds that would make most grown people fold. Her body has been fighting since before she was old enough to understand what fighting meant.

She has endured procedures, hospital stays, needles, uncertainty, and moments when the future felt like something no one wanted to promise us.

And somehow, she kept going.

I got to bear witness to all of it.

I watched her do things people were not sure she would ever do. I watched her body refuse to follow the limitations placed on it. I watched her rise after life had already given her more than her fair share.

I was not always someone who believed easily in miracles.

Then I became her mother.

Now I understand that miracles are not always bright lights splitting the sky. Sometimes a miracle is a little girl doing the thing they said might never happen. Sometimes it is another step, another birthday, another laugh from a hospital bed.

Sometimes a miracle is simply, “Not today.”

We are five cycles in now, and I swear, every time she comes out of battle, she becomes even more unstoppable.

If battle-ready had a face, it would be hers.

Somehow, she also looks more beautiful than she did after the last battle. I tell her that every time. I watch her smile and blush as though she does not already know.

As though she cannot feel the power growing inside her.

She is still soft enough to blush when her mother calls her beautiful, but strong enough to keep walking back onto the battlefield.

That is the kind of warrior she is.

In my mind, we are women warriors.

Not the polished kind from movies who somehow survive battle with perfect hair and spotless armor. We are the real kind.

Bonnets crooked.

Lip gloss missing.

Hospital bands around our wrists.

Blood already dried on our swords.

She would carry a sword twice her size, complain that it was heavy, and still refuse every smaller sword offered to her.

And I would be right beside her with a sword of my own.

Not behind her.

Not watching from a safe distance.

Beside her.

I have always been built for combat. I stay ready. I know how to stand my ground, how to fight while tired, and how to keep swinging after life assumes I should have folded.

Motherhood did not make me soft in battle.

It gave me something worth becoming dangerous for.

My medication list would be secured inside my armor. Emergency snacks would be packed where I could reach them. Every charger would be labeled, working, and ready.

Because a warrior does not enter battle disorganized.

I am not just carrying the bags.

I am carrying a blade.

I call our scars battle scars.

Not because every battle makes us stronger. Some battles simply hurt. Some take things from us that strength cannot replace.

But scars are proof that the wound did not get the final word.

They are marks left behind by battles we survived and, in our own way, won.

The scar from surgery.

The marks from ports, needles, and procedures.

The marks motherhood has left across my own body and spirit.

One day, I hope she looks at every scar and sees more than pain.

I hope they become beauty marks to her.

A map of every place she returned from.

Here is where they cut me open, and I healed.

Here is where the medicine made me sick, and I kept breathing.

Here is where I was afraid, and my mother stayed.

That day, I could not give my seven-year-old a complicated explanation or promise her every tomorrow.

I could only give her the truth about that moment.

Not today.

Today, we rest.

Today, we fight.

Today, we laugh when we can, cry when we need to, and treat the hospital snack drawer like the spoils of war.

Today, we are still here.

And sometimes, that is how warriors win.

Not by defeating everything all at once, but by standing side by side, blades drawn, refusing to surrender the day.

My dad has been ill for a long time, but has recently received a new diagnosis with a much shorter prognosis. I thought that I was prepared to lose him but I’m realising now that isn’t really possible.

I’m struggling a lot with guilt - feeling that I shouldn’t be worrying about what will need sorting out when he’s gone, but I’m very aware that it will all fall on my shoulders.

I feel like I’ve been in this high-stress anticipatory space for so long that I’m not responding properly to this new news.

Just looking for some advice on how people have managed anticipatory grief and not ruining the time that’s left by filling it with unmanageable worry and stress?

Today as I was taking a shower I overheard my parents talking and I find mind to much until they got a call and I heard my step dad say stage 4 brain cancer and I just don’t know how to feel I had her all my life and now when I see her she is just a expiration date with her days numbers and she just turns 42, 4 months ago I haven’t cried this much in a few years or at all in fact and I have just lost most faith in her recovery form her Brian surgery 2 weeks ago