Post Intensive Care Syndrome
My mother (63) passed away end of July 2025. She was diagnosed with Small Cell Lung Cancer in May 2025. She had no idea she had cancer or was sick at all. She was working full time and a very active person for her age up until 2 weeks before she was diagnosed. She started having back pain and arm pain that wouldn't go away. One day she just couldn't stand up and kept falling, she realized also that she couldn't urinate. An ambulance was called and she was admitted to the ER. There they did scans and saw she had tumors all throughout her body. Multiple masses on her spine, base of skull and jaw/face. I lived 6 hours from her so I got there while she was still the ER and essentially walked into her room right as her ICU doctor was telling her about the masses. It was a shock I can't still put my finger on. My mom was very energetic person, like a chihuahua. Seeing her basically paralyzed was odd in itself then at the same time learning her fall wasn't just a bad fall. Over the next 2 months she was in the hospital. She received radiation and chemo in hopes of just shrinking the tumors so she could have more time, but the tumors still grew and took over her body and face. She could no longer speak clearly. During the 2 months I was her primary advocate and caregiver. I stayed weeks at a time in hotels, driving back and forth. The hospital finally said there was nothing they could do anymore so she went to a nursing home to help give us time to get her moved closer to my family. By the time we had a plan and I had got her signed up for social security and medicaid, it was obvious in returning to her she was at the end. We drove her up to us and she was admitted to a nursing home but she ended up in the ER within an hour. There my sister and I made the choice for hospice. I did not have a great mother and daughter relationship, my mother was very flawed and had caused a lot of trauma to my family. I took on being her person during this because it was so sudden, intense and she had no one else. Her husband was also in the hospital the same time she was. Its been a year since her diagnosis and hospital stay and I find myself still struggling with the experience. The doctors never really would tell her how bad her cancer was. They only expressed how truly aggressive it was to me and my sister. They were shocked she was working full time at a grocery store weeks prior. It felt like I constantly had to be the bad guy with my mom. I became her power of Attorney during this time.
Her dying was sad and horrible but the hospital/nursing home/hospice are were my grief and ptsd feelings live. I just need feedback that I'm not crazy. Ive bee reading about Post Intensive Care Syndrome and that seems to be the closest explanation of how I feel.