Can she feel it?

I have noticed that sometimes my mother will touch her head when having mental strain. In one of the video sequences I shot for my documentary film, I noticed that when she completely forgot her train of thought, she touched her temple and rubbed up onto the front part of her head, above her forehead.

She has been experiencing headaches in the last 3 months. More than normal. At one point, we took her to urgent care after several days of headaches and a spike in confusion, disorientation and overall behavior decline. The examination revealed no specific, treatable physical ailment. It was disheartening to see.

My family and I have lived with my mother to care for her for over 3 years. We rarely have visitors since this increases her anxiety. This weekend however, we had my husband's parents over to visit for 4 hours. My mother would not come out of her bedroom while they were there. She was visibly upset, uncomfortable and agitated. She lay on her bed, covered up with a blanket except for the times she seemingly had forgotten the visitors were there. She would come out of her room every 90 minutes or so, look around and then go back in. After they left, she told me she had a terrible headache. She pointed to the middle of her scalp and said, "It hurts from here, all the way down," running her fingers forward to her forehead. As she made this motion, I realized this is the frontal lobe of her brain.

A sickening feeling washed over me. It's as if she is feeling her brain die.

Since she had breast cancer in 2010, her doctors were originally looking for brain cancer. Cancer is treatable. Cancer, even sometimes brain cancer, is operable. I recall her first physician telling us after her second brain scan, "Her brain shows signs of shrinkage and damage."