My mum has just been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in both of her lungs. She's forbidden my sisters and I to search the statistics but we're fully aware they aren't good, and that at this point there is no cure.
I'm 18, I've just started uni two hundred miles from home, and I feel scared and isolated and anxious. My best friends and my sisters are all scattered around the country - I have friends here but nobody I feel comfortable opening up to with this...
It just feels so unfair - she was first diagnosed with primary breast cancer when I was too small to really understand anything, and then again when I was 13. When she was given the all clear the second time I thought it was over but obviously it's not.
Not being able to talk about it has been eating me up inside but I just don't have anyone who I can speak to about it without having to pretend that I'm okay... which is how I ended up here
