NikNox

Hi all,

It's been a while since I posted, but nothing had happened so nothing to report. SD was still not speaking to her mum, and to be honest, life was pretty stress free.

But, yesterday I was told by someone who knows SD's mum well, that she has cancer. I was told she has it in her womb and liver. I've worked in the medical profession for 17 years, so I know that's bad and prognosis is poor. Anyway, I decided to phone SD's brother's dad to see if he could tell me more, cos he sees her often. He said he was aware she'd had a biopsy and a CT scan, and told him things weren't looking good. He also said she was very yellow and very swollen, all over. I've seen many patients over the years with liver cancer, and it is pretty much a death sentance to be honest, and if the liver is already damaged, through alcohol abuse for example, prior to a cancer, then treatment options are very limited, and care is mostly palliative.

So, dilemna as I'm sure you can all imagine. Do we tell SD was the question my husband and I were asking ourselves last night. We decided that this news should come from mum, and that they should make their peace before time runs out, but we didn't know how to even begin to make that happen without telling SD. Anyway, in the end, my husband casually mentioned to SD that he thought her not speaking to her mum had gone on long enough, and suggested she contact her mum. She said she would text her. Great, we thought, hopefully that will open the door to communication between them, and to mum telling SD what's going on, hopefully sooner rather than later. When SD came home from school today she said 'oh I got a text from mum this morning'. I said 'great, what did she have to say?'. Mum had told SD in the text that she misses her and wants to see her soon, and said she's had 2 operations recently and is very poorly but is resting. She said 'I will phone you later, so make sure your phone is on and you pick up'. SD sat down looking very worried, so I decided to tell her what I had been told yesterday. Not sure if that was wrong or right, but seeing as mum had told her she was very poorly, I figured it would be good to prepare the kid. We talked for about an hour about cancer etc., and SD, not being stupid, said 'she's got this from drinking hasn't she?'. I answered that yes, most likely she had as drinking heavily does increase the risk of liver disease, including cancer, and she was somewhat ambivalent and said 'well she brought it on herself didn't she, and I always knew she'd die from her liver'. Not many flies on this kid I can tell you!

So, that was that, and we all sat this evening waiting for mum to call. SD wanted to speak to her mum, for the first time in 2 months, with us present, for support. But the call never came. She even text her mum and asked her to ring, but she didn't. Same old, same old = one angry kid, again.

I'm sure there will be an 'excuse', like 'I'm ill, I was tired'. Yep, that's acceptable NOW, but all the other times over the past year when she's promised to call and hasn't can't be attributed to that, and all SD sees is her mum's behaviour hasn't changed. We're not going to get involved, my husband is not going to text her to tell her she should have rung her daughter when she said she would. We will, of course, encourage whatever contact SD wants with her mum, and will support her in making her peace with her mum. But, that's a two way thing, isn't it, and despite being ill, mum has to make the effort too.

Any thoughts on this awful situation, any guidance, whatever, would be most welcome. Thank you.

NYCDoglvr

What a heartbreaking situation for everyone. It sounds to me that you're doing a very good job of handling it, better than I would. You talk to her and you're there for her and these are the two most important things. It might be a good thing for SD to learn about alcoholism, that it's a disease and not her mother being lazy and stupid. Yes, she brought it on herself probably but she doesn't deserve cancer, doesn't deserve to die. She is very, very lucky to have you. God bless....

wicked

Oh Niknok,
This is just awful for your stepdaughter. I wish I could fly over the pond and hug the stiff upper lip out of her.
I agree with NYC, you are doing such a great job with her and her dad. They are very lucky to have you at the helm.
Yes, let bio mom do what she will. She is very ill (oh i see that you know 17 years), I am surprised she remembers her phone number.
My father went from tyrant to pitiful in a split second when he was dying in the hospital.
It was awful to see him. Awful.
Thank you for being there for her, and for listening to me too. :ghug3

Beth

angrywife

My mother died from COPD four years ago, from smoking. I was very hard on her while she was here, she was killing herself and it really pissed me off. If she had stopped smoking when she got the diagnosis she would likely still be around. COPD, once it develops, never improves but if she would've quit smoking it wouldn't have got worse. What made things worse is that I quit smoking and had been smoke free for 4 years, so I felt that if I could do it, she could've done it too. Though not alcohol or drugs, she killed herself with her addiction.

After she passed, none of that mattered though. She was my mom and now she's gone. I wish I could've detached from the addiction and not let it affect the way I treated her. Not a day goes by that I don't think about her and miss her.

I still don't know how I would've done things differently, I just wish I had. I would definitely recommend counseling for your SD. All I can say is that no matter how prepared you think you are to lose someone, when it actually happens it's not at all what you expected.

NikNox

Thank you everyone. Virtual hugs to you all

What I am really struggling with though, and I KNOW this will happen, is that mum won't change. I don't mean I expect her to change .. er how do I explain this. I think what I'm trying to say is that she clearly won't stop drinking. What's the point after all? A smoker diagnosed with lung cancer (or COPD, or emphysema) carries on smoking (a fair few of the patients at the practice where I work do anyway, and I'll never understand that, and am so sorry for your loss Angrywife) excusing their habit then as helping them deal with the stress of their diagnosis, and I see SD's mum as being no different. If she's only been given a short time to live (which of course we can't be sure of at the moment), then she aint gonna quit the booze is she! She may even, possibly, because her diagnosis is so horrific and frightening, resort back to her original addiction, the drug she's always maintained she misses so so much .. heroin. And some would say who can blame her. How do any of us actually know how it feels to be given an actual, real death sentence. We don't, and if we did we may find ourselves reaching out for some kind of prop.

But, that doesn't help this 13 year old child, who has struggled so much to understand her mother's addiction and how her mother hasn't bothered with her in the last year since she's been living with us. And she has to be our priority. This kid who was very happy in her decision, 2 months ago, to write to her mum and tell her she's had enough of being let down and lied to, and that she wanted no more to do with her. She set a very solid boundary, and we were proud of her for that, and supported her decision. And, mum didn't respond, just as we expected, she didn't try and fight to see her daughter, she didn't turn up on our doorstep to plead with the child to sort things out. She didn't write to her, she didn't apologise for her behaviour, she didn't even try. She just sent a text every so often (not even regularly), mainly about her and how SHE was, and in a lot of ways the one yesterday was no different. It was still ALL ABOUT HER. Okay, I know that's harsh, because she is very ill, but it's no different to how she's always been, incredibly selfish. And, we were the ones sitting with SD last night whilst she waited for a call from her mum, her sick mum who she hasn't spoken to in 2 months, and we were the ones who had to think up excuses as to why mum didn't phone (I told SD she was probably tired and fell asleep or something, when I expect the truth is she was drunk and forgot). My husband did offer SD his phone and said 'call her', but she said 'no dad, I want HER to call ME', which is absolutely fair enough.

It's all such a mess, and this child so needs to make her peace with her mum. Otherwise she will never forgive herself and will have to live with guilt all her life. How do we stop that from happening? Okay, there will be guilt inevitably, there always is, it's part of the grieving process, but it could literally ruin her life. Do we take her over to mum's, drop her off on the doorstep and hope mum lets her in? But, that's US getting involved in ensuring she sees her daughter, and it shouldn't be down to us should it? It should be down to her.

Another thing we are very concerned about is that when/if mum finally tells my SD the awful truth about her illness, because she is a master manipulator she may manipulate SD into moving back in with her to look after her. All SD's life her mum made her feel like she was responsible for her (typical CODIE), and it's only very recently that SD has realised that she never was responsible for her mum and she has been very angry about how her childhood wasn't a childhood, and that she has been her mum's carer throughout. She is a very sensitive girl, very sensitive to the feelings of others, therefore making her easy to manipulate by someone who has always manipulated her, has always been very good at making her feel guilty. Do we have the right to put our feet down (we do have a Residence Order for SD) and say 'no, you will NOT move back in with her to look after her'? We are so frightened of that because we know what it's like to nurse someone with cancer (not from personal experience) and it's awful. I can really see this being an issue. SD has come so far in her own recovery, yet we can see her mum taking her right back to the beginning.

Hopeworks

As an ACOA who has been through much counseling I absolutely would not do this... having the child in the same room with the active alcoholic who may be physically present but emotionally unavailable and completely screwed up will be unhelpful and potentially harmful.

You are right to be concerned but there may be other alternatives that might be more helpful in the long run. Personally I benefitted enormously from counseling as an adult after I was out of my alcoholic childhood home. The child sounds very perceptive and bright for her age and this would be my first suggestion to find a good counselor who knows addiction and relationships.

If there is a family member (grandparent of the A etc) who could try to communicate with the mother the importance of her also cooperating with a counselor being involved to make sure that the child does not suffer further with guilt or remorse after her mother passes.

The A is most likely going to remain a hot mess and how successful any of this will be is hard to say. I would certainly make sure any visits are supervised by a counselor or some other knowlegable and informed adult who make sure that the A does not say or do anything inappropriate that makes the child suffer any further psychological damage.

If the A is a complete mess and visits would be traumatic then I wouldn't allow them... of course... again...I would involve a professional through the process to give me guidance to make these hard, hard decisions.

Make sure that her father makes the appropriate decisions and do not put it on the child... whatever you do.

My father never told any of us children that he loved us...I don't think he ever once hugged me or any of my siblings. He completely terrified me as a child... he was not only drunk he was dangerous.

As an adult and after I had gone to a lot of counseling I made peace with him before he died of his alcoholism. It was a peace not a relationship and I was an adult and not a child.

She will not get that opportunity to work through the craziness as an adult in counseling ... she is so very young.

It is good that you are pondering these hard things and that you care so much for your step daughter... she will need you love and support even more.


Enforce this... absolutely!!! Keep her safe in a normal loving home and protect her. Take all the heat from whereever it may come.

NikNox

Thank you Hopeworks. You make a lot of sense. This woman has already caused so much damage to the child, and left alone with her, she could cause even more damage, severe enough to affect her for the rest of her life. We will NOT let that happen. But, we have a child who does actually care about her mother. She said a few weeks ago that she wishes she didn't care about her, or love her, because that would make things easier. You're right, she is bright, she's very mature for her age because she's HAD to grow up quick. Not only was she her mother's carer for most of her childhood, she also had to care for her younger half brother too (who also lives with his father, after being removed from mum last November by Social Services). Both children are in the right places, they are with their fathers, safe. Mum has more contact with the boy because they live in the same town, 20 miles from us. But, she tries to manipulate him, and he's only 8 years old. When he has visits with her, she makes him 'work'. He has to clean the house, from top to bottom, and has to check his 'work' 3 times before she will allow his father to take him home. She tells him constantly that 'when things are back to normal and you're living with me again, I will buy you such and such (there is an endless list of 'treats')', but even at his tender age he is able to say to her 'but I don't want to live back with you. I want to stay with my dad'. She tells him not to be stupid, that he 'belongs' with her.

Sorry, I digressed a bit there. You're right that we should not leave SD alone with her mother, I worry about that too. Sadly, there is no-one on mum's side that she speaks to, she has abused her whole entire family, so much so that they don't want anything to do with her. And who can blame them. We are in contact with her mother, and she has contact with SD, her granddaughter, which only happened for the first time when SD came to live with us. Prior to that, SD had been told her maternal grandmother was dead. I have thought that perhaps mum's first contact with SD should perhaps be at our home? I doubt very much that she would accept an offer of visiting SD at our home, but we don't know what kind of state she's in visibly (although we have been assured she is swollen and yellow), and that's distressing for a child. Maybe we would have to simply enforce it, say 'you can only visit her at our home', and if she wants to see her then she will won't she? Otherwise I cannot see how contact could be supervised.

SD does have counselling, weekly at school, and for the most part it's been helpful. We also encourage her to talk about her feelings, and she has joined several websites aimed at teenage children of alcoholics, which she also finds helpful. I am going to speak to our GP tomorrow about more specialised counselling.

This is so damned hard, and such a mess.

Seren

Well, your SD has not yet asked to take care of her Mum, right? Try not to awfulize something that has yet to happen. Hard, I know....

And yes, at 13 years old, it would be an incredibly damaging and unfair burden for her to be the 'hospice nurse' to her still actively drinking mother. If it were me, I would take advantage of the residence order only if needed--i.e. your SD says she wants to go care for her Mum.

I'm so sorry that all of you are going through this. You, your SD and husband, and even her Mum are in my thoughts and prayers.

NikNox

I love that word - awfulize! I see what you're saying, but her mum will make her feel that she has to care for her, we know that, and she will feel that she must. Of course, she is only 13 and therefore must abide by what we say, as her resident, legal parents. But who wants to put on their kid when they're having such a stressful time. Alcoholics, yes, because they are selfish and never see how their behaviour affects others. We have to live with every decision we make for this child.

Learn2Live

Do they have Alateen in the UK? You may want to look into taking her to meetings.
There are also reading materials that are written for her age group to help her understand the disease of alcoholism. Here is one link and I know there are more materials out there. Coping With an Alcoholic Parent
Just as adults, teens need to learn about the disease to help them to cope and see that the problems and feelings she is having about her mom and how she acts have NOTHING to do with her. She needs to know that her mom loves her but that she is sick and unable to care for her the way a healthy mom would. I would not leave her with the mother unsupervised for any amount of time. No matter how mature the child seems to be, or how well she appears to cope with the issue of her mother, or with her mother directly, she still needs help dealing with this. We all need help dealing with this.

Learn2Live

P.S. By the time I was 13 I was already a full-blown caretaker. I was already seeking out those who needed advice and to be supervised and "fixed," surrounded myself with dysfunctional people to take care of. It was not until I was 29 years old that I even discovered that I was this way for a reason, that I was codependent. Please Google and get some books or other materials for her to read so that she can understand this very important issue that she is sure to be confronted with. The earlier in life she begins to understand herself and why she does the things she does, the easier it will be for her to avoid them and the better off she will be in the long-run. I am in my mid-40s and still battling myself because of growing up with an alcoholic parent.

JenT1968

I'm sorry this is happening, but maybe you can slow down a bit?

A habit I'm trying to get out of is spirralling out of control into the future and trying to work out all the bad things that could possibly happen and plan ways to ensure they don't. I end up getting myself in a right pickle, and mostly life doesn't play out how I'd worried ablout anyway.

right now her mother hasn't called to talk to her, they've not met, she's not piled on the manipulation and SD has not decided to move back in with her, to care for her terminally ill mother thus tainting her life for ever.

right now you have a girl who is p'd off that her mother didn't call her when she said she would yet again. - I'd concentrate on helping her express and work through those feelings, not try and avert any feelings she may have in the future.

I don't think you should (or could) try and force a nice meeting between sd and her mother where sd "makes her peace": that is one potential outcome of a meeting, but probably quite unlikely.

you don't really know what her mother's prognosis is, when (/if) her mother dies, whether sd has or hasn't been able to emotionally come to terms with her mother's alcoholism (and that doesn't mean reconcilling, or seeing her mother necessarily) she's going to have whole heap of emotions and thoughts that she needs to work through: so don't borrow trouble from the future and go at her pace? if she wants to see or talk to her mum, help her, but don't engineer anything (always backfires on me when I try).

until that point, stop worrying about it (soooooooo much easier said that done). you can work out what's best to do when the time comes (if). You're doing great

JenT1968

sorry there was an awful lot of "you"s and even a "should" in that post.
I'm clearly having a "know-it-all" relapse.

NikNox

Hey, no worries. I appreciate people's comments and opinions, warts and all. That's why I come here, because when we are in the middle of things, we don't always 'see' what we should. Therefore other people can point it out to us. It's immensely helpful. And you are right, we haven't got these issues right now, I'm just looking ahead to the potential difficulties we could face. I'm like that, can't help it, but do recognise it's not necessarily healthy.

Of note, I have heard today that the reason SD's mum didn't call her last night was because she was pi$$ed on vodka, at her best friends house (this information came from her best friends stepdaughter), beating the crap out of my informant's brother, along with her best friend. Two grown women, totally out of their brains, beating up a lad. Apparently, SD's mum was 'vicious' and the poor lad has been left with a cut lip and two black eyes. I'm not sure if the police are involved, but they should be. So, it begs a few questions ... how 'ill' is this woman exactly? To have the strength to beat someone up. I don't know, and I don't particularly care to be honest, and if anything it has reiterated exactly why we should NOT allow any contact to be unsupervised. And to think we were actually considering allowing SD to go over there!!! Madness!!! And, by the way, mum has behaved this way in the past in front of both her children, so having them with her doesn't stop her violence.

I have shared this with SD. She made both my husband and I promise, a year ago, to always tell her the truth, even if it hurt her, and we have respected that. She's disgusted with her mum, of course, and said 'it's pretty obvious that she doesn't care about me isn't it'. I did explain that she does care, but right now the booze is more important. But, she knows that, she's been dealing with that in her counselling.

I am not a violent person, in any way shape or form, but there is something about that woman that makes me just wanna go punch her lights out. I won't, of course, but godammit I feel like it.

Seren

Again, this may or may not happen. Her Mum certainly has a history of trying to make her feel guilty, but your SD seems to be learning to not buy into that.

I hope you can try not to project your fears of what might happen on to this situation. Perhaps wait, watch, be open to anything your SD wants to talk about, and see what happens. One day at a time.....

NikNox

Hi guys, little update.

SD's mum finally phoned her, a day late (but that was because she was out of her head the night before, beating up a young man). The first thing SD asked her was 'so, you're ill, what's wrong?'. Mum proceeded to tell her that she had 'second degree cervical cancer', that she'd had a biopsy on her cervix a month ago and that the 'cancer' had been cured with an injection so all was fine. Then they had a conversation which was quite civilised, for about 10 minutes. SD did ask her mum when she would come to see her, and was told 'not just yet because I'm still recovering from the biopsy operation (erm, I had a cervical biopsy some years ago for CIN3 and went back to work straight after ... she had this biopsy a month ago!). SD got off the phone and straight away asked me about the 'second degree cervical cancer'. I had to admit that I'd never heard of it, but decided to Google it anyway. As I suspected, no such thing. So I asked SD if her mum had said 'secondary cervical cancer', but she insisted her mum said 'second degree' and that it had been cured with an injection. Hmm, very suspicious. Anyway, a little time later, SD emerged and said she'd done some Googling of her own. She said 'I think she's lying. I think she's got 'secondary' cancer, which means she has got another cancer somewhere else, and I think it's her liver cos she's yellow'. Very astute child, and as mum IS yellow, it certainly fits much better than the **** and bull story she spun the child. I think mum forgets that I work in the medical profession too, and clearly thinks her daughter is stupid enough to believe some made up illness she decides to tell her. Perhaps she won't admit she has liver cancer, because if she admitted that she would have to admit she's an alcoholic, and as she's in denial of her alcoholism it stands to reason that she's in denial of any liver disease also.

Anyway, there's no way of us finding out exactly what is wrong with mum. SD has said that she will confront her about her yellowness when and if she sees her, but said in the meantime she's going to take everything her mother says to her 'with a pinch of salt'. Very wise.