Caregivers and Stress

[JustLovelyJenn]

New adventure in the life of Jenn as a caregiver... I am spending part of the summer in Utah, helping my cousin who has stage four metastatic breast cancer. She is on her THIRD run of chemo... and its kicking her ass. I am doing my best to just make sure she has what she needs and leave her alone to rest... but this is defiantly a new experience for me. While taking care of my kiddo is demanding, there are things I can do, things that help, structure to follow. Taking care of my mother when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, was a challenge, but it was new, and it was early, and the prognosis was easy. No chemo, radiation only, take the lump, eat healthy take your meds and go back to your life. Seeing everything my cousin is dealing with is hard. She knows this is not getting better. She knows we are just prolonging things as long as possible... hoping she makes it to her daughters high school graduation, her college graduation, her wedding, her first grandbabies birth. But, we dont know if any of that will happen. And I can see it in her, and it hurts my heart.