I cry every day over my mother's condition...the question is when

In February, I got a call that my mother had been admitted to an Emergency Room by her Primary Care Physician. At the time, I was not her Patient Proxy, so they couldn't even update me on her condition over the phone. "I am sorry. You aren't on her chart." I am her only child. I did hear the words "Brain Oncologist" and immediately thought my mother had brain cancer. At that moment, my knees went out from underneath me and I almost fainted in my kitchen in California.

I flew to NY immediately. After 2 lung biopsies and 2 uterine biopsies, the results were still inconclusive. They wanted to perform exploratory brain surgery to determine from where the cancer had metastasized. She was stable and so we went back to her Upper Westside apartment for 10 days to make some big decisions.

After painstakingly looking into the best brain surgeons, we switched hospitals and mom had brain surgery with a tumor removal and resection in the front right lobe of her brain. From the pathology, they were able to determine that it was an andenocarcenoma or brain tumors and lesions that have metastasized from lung cancer.

And so the nightmare began...

After returning to LA for a week, I came back to NY and slept on her couch for 5 weeks. One of her friends was going out of town for a month and lives 3 blocks away, so I rented a place to have a bed and someplace to work. I am an SEO (Search Engine Optimizer: in a nutshell - I make websites more easily found by the people who are looking for them) and have barely kept my company afloat.

The role of cancer caregiver is a tough one: medications, radiation, chemotherapy, depression, hair loss, steroids, etc. It never ends.

I cry every day...the question is when.