Family Caregiver

Amanda's Story

So in 2015 we did a full round of chemo in North Bay, and because it was at a stage four, it wasn't enough. We moved down to Sudbury for six weeks of chemo and radiation; my mom rented a place on the lake which was nice. We knew that they had a hotel right beside the hospital, but my mom wanted it to be more personal and comfortable for my grandmother.

I was in school, and my mom worked during the day, so she moved her entire office to Sudbury. My stepdad would drive my grandma to radiation, and we would take care of her at night when she would go through her symptoms. There was vomiting, she could not swallow her pills in the morning... she had a hard time with it. She was barely eating, and she lost a lot of weight.

I knew she was struggling with self-image issues. Every morning I would draw on her eyebrows, and she loved that. That was her favourite thing to do in the morning. It was hard, but I knew she would have done it for me. So, I did everything I could for her to make sure she was happy and comfortable.

I was going to dropout - my thoughts were, 'if I do this, I'm going to have no regrets. If I do not do this, I would probably never forgive myself.' I was already missing a lot of school because I did not want to miss her doctor appointments and I wanted to go to her surgeries. It was affecting my education, and I knew my grandmother did not want that. But in my mind, she was my number one priority.

So I contacted Modern College, explained the situation, so I ended up getting transferred to the Modern College in Sudbury. It was hard studying, because it was a condensed course. The courses were difficult, plus I was helping, giving my mom and stepdad a break... it was hard to focus.

The physician admitted her in the North Bay hospital because she was going to pass; they told her she had a month left. It was not the cancer that was killing her, it was the medication.

So my mom bought the house - that they live in now - so that she could bring my grandma home to live full time at the house. She came home for three weeks, which was awesome. We had people coming in all the time to check on her. I think our biggest accomplishment was having her home for those three weeks, to have that time with her.

But she ended up getting sick again. So, they put her on A2. As her condition got worse, they kept moving her down the hall. And then she ended up in palliative. I was always in denial of the whole situation, like there is no way she is going to die.

We were all there, she was never alone the entire time. I saw my mom go through a lot because she had to work. She set up an office in the hospital room, and we had cots in and out. We always stayed there.

The hardest part for me was seeing her go through these attacks where she would stop breathing, cough, cough, cough. She would try and scurry out of bed just to get some air; so, the nurses would bring in a morphine mask to calm her down.

Seeing her bed pan, seeing the catheter, things like that... I was never good with medical stuff.

The morning of her death, I was out of town for a course for the day. My mom had called me, and she said “'the nurse said she has a couple of days.' I drove to the hospital immediately. Her fingers started to turn blue – they kept saying it was going to be a couple of days, but something wasn’t right – and I told her, “it’s okay to go.”

Not even five minutes later, she was gone. I was lucky enough to be there, holding her hand on one side, while my mother was on the other.

I initially took a week off work, and thought, 'there has to be a way for me to help.' I saw the reaction my grandma had when I would go in and do her eyebrows, it would put a smile on her face.

I wanted to make women and men with cancer feel good about themselves. To be a companion, someone that they can talk to, because the family is already going through enough. So I looked online and found that there was an oncology aesthetics program, and that is the field that I’m in. I buckled down, signed up for the course, and it took about eight months to finish. I decided that this is what I want to do, this is the career path that I want to take. Being certified to work on patients who have been diagnosed with cancer.