Caroline B.

About Caroline B.

My grandfather was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2005. This was only 3 months after my mother, his daughter, found out that her husband had a terminal brain tumor. For the next few years my mother bounced between helping her husband with his radiation and chemo and helping her father with his chemo shots. Fast forward to 2017. My father had passed away eight years prior to Acute Myeloid Leukemia, the result of his brain tumor treatment. My grandfather’s prostate cancer was being controlled with biannual chemo shots. We had all learned how to live with cancer. Then our family was devastated to learn that my grandfather had AML, the same cancer that took my father–my mother’s husband. My mom helped my grandfather secure the best care possible. In the summer of 2018, my mother had to “move in” to her parents house to help them. I say “move in” because she lived out of a suitcase. She put her life literally on hold–foregoing fixing the water leak that flooded her own house and traveling to another state to help my grandparents in every capacity. She kept the house stocked with hand sanitizer so that my neutropenic grandfather wouldn’t get sick. She scavenged grocery stores to find foods that would still taste good after a year of chemo, but that also met his dietary restrictions. She carried him to oncology twice a week and to doctors appointments across state lines. When my grandfather was admitted to the hospital my mother went with him, staying on my floor or in a hotel so that he wouldn’t be alone. During this time, she was also helping her mother was also being hospitalized for congestive heart failure and A-Fib. In January my grandfather was on his third hospital stay, and my mom spent three weeks living out of her suitcase at a hotel so that she could visit him daily. She worked tirelessly to find a hospice service that would meet his needs and to make sure she could fulfill his wishes. On January 31, 2018 my grandfather passed away. My mother, his devoted caretaker, is now trying to rediscover what her life is. Somehow she spent the past 6 months juggling my grandfathers medicine, appointments, and his comfort, with her job, her role as my mother, and my grandmother’s medical needs. Throughout all of this she hasn’t complained. She has only demonstrated a fierce loyalty to her family. I am nominating her as a cancer caretaker because she deserves recognition for demonstrating selfless love and she deserves the time to take care of herself.

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