Hello everybody.
I've been doing a lot better recently, in that I am functional. Haven't had to take any time off work for mental health related reasons or otherwise. I'm pretty depressed, but I find the symptoms of depression much more manageable than the symptoms of anxiety and what I call 'trauma emotion' (for want of any other term). Those things are still there, but they are mostly suppressed.
But what I am worried about at the moment is my mother's health.
She is 69 and for the last eighteen months or so she has been experiencing bloating. She is naturally thin like me but her abdomnen is markedly swollen these days. It isn't fat. It's something beneath the fat and the muscle. She says she feels bloated.
I remember a few years back she had some similar bloating, but that seemed to subside a little. About two years ago she was getting a strange 'icy' pain in her uterus and went to the doctor. The doctor was actually quite concerned and sent her for a fast track pelvic ultrasound, but the ultrasound was clear. I assume they would have scanned her ovaries, but I don't know?!
The clear ultrasound eased my mind for a while but now I'm worried again. The bloating seems really strange to me and she is generally a bit under the weather and does not have much appetite. She is normally very healthy and energetic. She isn't going to the doctor for a couple of weeks.
Her sister was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in her early 70s and died a year later. Apart from that, cancer does not seem to run in the family.
I'm just very concerned, particularly given the family link for ovarian cancer. I have no siblings, no parter, no children. She is my family. I can't have anything happen to her, particularly now that I am no longer a very stable person.