Coping With Caregiving

My mom was first diagnosed in 1994, and is still alive today.
She has a tumor called an oligodendrioma and she’s been fighting it for nearly 13 years.
When the tumor was first discovered in late 1994, they did surgery and then many months of radiation. It was the size of a ping pong ball. It was believed that it was gone, so then she did the usual MRI’s every 3 months, then 6 months, then 1 year and then up to every 2 years. In between one of the two years, her tumor grew back to about the size of a pea, and was discovered in 2002… at almost the exact time of year.

She had surgery again, followed by 8 months of chemotherapy ( she had had her lifetime dosage of radiation from the previous treatments, and any more would have been more harmful than beneficial.) At this point the tumor was so small it couldn’t be detected on an MRI, so they stopped the chemo

The tumor started growing back last year, and she resumed chemotherapy in July of 2006. She’s been doing chemo every month ever since.

I’m pretty sure she’s not going to survive though… she gets siezures ( or shakes, as she preffers to call them) fairly often, more like every day now. And whenever she gets them, she loses motor control on the left side of her body, simmilar to someone who’s experienced a stroke. Each day it’s getting worse- sometimes I can’t even understand what she’s saying when she’s tired.