One of the side effects of motherhood I greatly underestimated was the amount of anxiety it produces. I consider myself a born worrier. I knew I would worry about my child. I just had no idea how detailed and graphic the worries would be. And I didn’t know how much I’d start worrying about myself.
Realizing how completely children rely on their caregivers is a sobering reality. Sadly, one single mother in the UK is having to simultaneously grapple with her mortality and the welfare of her children once she’s gone. She's dying of cancer and has just months to live.
Louise Hayward noticed bleeding years ago.
Hayward is the 48-year-old mother of three children: 19-year-old William, Faith, 9, and Louie, 7. Years ago, she started noticing blood in her stool. She experienced so much bleeding that she had to “sit on a bowl” to stop it. And that's not even to mention the pain.
“I felt like I was giving birth — that’s how bad the pain was,” Hayward said in an interview with the South West News Service, per the New York Post.
Hayward has been doing chemo and radiation therapy. But it wasn't enough.
Due to the pandemic, Hayward put off seeing a doctor. When she finally did go, in November 2020, doctors found a 7 centimeter tumor in her large bowel. Bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer, affects the colon and rectum. Now, years later — after undergoing chemo and radiation therapy — doctors have told Hayward she has just months to live. She doesn’t know how she is going to break the news to her young children.
Hayward's younger children know about the cancer, but not the prognosis.
“They know about my cancer,” Hayward said, according to the New York Post. “But I haven’t been able to tell them that I’m dying.”
The cancer has spread to her liver and lungs in the past two years. Doctors said further treatment is no longer viable.
“They told me there is nothing else they can do,” Hayward said. “I was devastated. All of this is so scary; I was never expecting to be told I was dying.”
Hayward hasn't had the heart to tell her children she's dying.
Hayward wants to spare her children the pain of her prognosis, even though her elder son William is already aware.
“It’s so unfair to them," she said. "I just think, ‘Why did they have to be born into this life?’ How do I tell them they’re going to lose their mum at such a young age?”
Now, she is worried about her children's financial future.
Hayward plans for her children to be raised by her sister Rachel after she passes. In the meantime, Hayward is devoting much of her energy to ensuring that her children will be taken care of financially in her absence.
“All I can do is try to raise some money for them after I have passed,” she said.
She has launched a GoFundMe to help support her children. It has already passed its goal of $12,000.
We’re not only sorry that the mother has to prepare to say goodbye to her children but also that her last few months with them have to be consumed with worries about money.
