Hi. In April 2018 my Mum calle dme late at night, on the eve of me startign a much needed job. It was totally out of character for her and I knew soemthign was really wrong. She had memeory problems and thought she had agreed with me that I would take her to the hospital on the Friday morning. We hadn't discussed it and I didn't know that the nurse ho looked after her swollen legs thought she had a cancerous growth on one fo them. I took her to hospital and she had an abdominal scan (surprisingly) that confirmed cancer and that it had spread. The ensuing months were a nightmare. As the cancer progressed the help was very slow in coming, despite my frantic efforts to push the doctors and cancer nurse to do more and faster. Notes were lost, coordination was bad and it was pretty awful, especially as the hospital for the scans and biopsy was a 2 hour journey from her house.

My employer was marginally sympathetic and would allow me to attend appointments with her but I ahd to organise a hospital shuttle to take her home and one day she was very upset about it and kept telling the ambulance driver I would be arriving at the house soon, as she bled quite a bit following the biopsy he phoned me to ask me to come, although the bleeding had stopped. I didnt go until after 5:30pm when my work day ended (about an hour after the call) and I called my mother to let her know I was coming and she told me not to bother and appeared to mean it as I tried to insist and she said No.  

After the biopsy  the correct consultant, in another hospital finally received her notes and  I received a call from his secretary telling me to breing her in to him the next day as he was going on holiday and her appointment could not wait. My employer however had a deadline to meet and refused to allow me to take her and would not allow me to have the afternoon off to help her. it was desperately awful. . I tried to organise alternative transport or a taxi (as the journey was over an hour from her house) and eventually we had to reorganise the appointment. She was diagnosed with a very serious and aggressive form of melanoma that had invaded her lymph and nervous system. Mum still beleived the doctors could cure her though.

My son and I treated her on her birthday, as by now it was August. It really had taken that long. She still ahd not had any treatment although nurses were coming to the house frequently to cange ehr dressings and did her shopping and continued to organise her appointments and to talk to the doctors about her care. This was largely because her memory was very very bad and she really could nto manage to organise her own affairs. My brother called on her birthday and the phone was turned to loud and I could hear him forbidding my mother to have anything to do with me and my son. I was shocked and bewildered. After this my mother removed me from the next of kin list and the doctors could no longer speak with me, neither her GP or the hospital doctors. She then calle dme and told me to leave her alone. During the last phonecall with her GP he said he beleived she had dementia and had been hallucinating as she spoke of me visiting her on days when i hadnt done so. My brother and his wife live in Canada and despite me contacting him and asking him to visit and to discuss things with me he refused to come until Novemebr and then was hostile and told me that he and his wife would help my mother and I was to stay out of it,  He did tell me that my mothers' prognosis was that she would live until about Novemebr 2019 but there was no hope of a cure.

I was very worried about my mother but due to the GDP laws and because she had told the doctor things about me that were not true and which scared me and I felt that there was nothing I could do to help her. I visited her several times and she told me to go away. I then visited after calling first, just before Christmas and she said she wanted to fly to Canada to see my brother (which was impossible in her condition) and she physically attacked my legs with her zimmer frame. I called her on Christmas day and there was no answer. She didnt like anyone to come to the house without telephoning and gaining her permission first and I assumed she was with her step-daughter (I still do not know where she was). I called many times in the following months. I had lost my job due to helping her so intensely in 2018 and had to take a job away from home. I continued to call her but she only answered once and then dropped the call.

In March I called on Mothers Day and although someone was in the house it did nto appear to be my mother and no one answered the door or the phone. I left phone messages and a card and a letter hoping she would get in touch.

Just before Easter 2019 I received a call from her solicitor, on instructions from my brother to tell me my mother was in her last few hours or days and to call my brother. I was given a Canadian number but he was infact diverting the call and was in England. I immediately asked where my mother was and he refused to tell me. He said he didnt like me and didnt feel like it. I called the solicitor who said they couldnt tell me where my mother was. She died on Good Friday but no one told me until the Tuesday, when I called the solicitor to ask what was going on.

My mothers' first husband (my brothers' father), my brother, sister-in-law all tunred on me; cut me out of the funeral ..which I only knew about because my mothers' solicitor told me. my brother had a memorial for my mother, where his wife spoke in my place and then he flew back to Canada without even waiting for the cremation. Many valuable items had gone missing from my Mothers house and all her bank accounts had been cleaned out. i beleive my brother did this. I am not on speaking terms with him, his wife or his father any longer and I suffer from anxiety whenever rthe executors contact me about mum's estate, which is tiny now. and whenever I think my brother is going to return to England from Canada.

I attained a copy of my mothers' death certificate, which says she died from the complications of a merkel cell melanoma in a nursing home in Wells. I miss her a lot. In the meantime my brother has clainmed ALL of her remaining possessions including all the family photograph albums going back 100 years.  I cannot afford legal representation and I feel so sad about it all. I have been so depressed and I am only jsut coming out of it. It is my mother whom I miss.

I feel that I should have tried harder to insist on helping her more and that I shouldnbt have been intimidated by the system. But i really could not get anywhere with doctors in helping her with her medical matters and she wouldnt allow me to help her after my brother spoke to her on her birthday. 

I hope I will never have to see my brother again. I still feel so shocked all these months later. and I do feel guilty.