MIL diagnosis - what to expect?

[RugbyMama]

Hello,

I am on a forum elsewhere on this site that I have very helpful, so thought it was time I tried this one. Hoping to learn and understand a bit more about this condition.

About a year ago, my mother in law (MIL) started showing some peculiar symptoms. She has always struggled with her mobility, but she became increasingly unsteady on her feet, had several falls, struggled with short term memory and was speaking less and less. She refused to engage fully with GP, it was only when she had a fall at home while a contractor was carrying out work who pressed her fall alarm that she was taken to hospital and an MRI was done that her meningioma was discovered.

That was in January 2024. We were initially told she would have 12 weeks to live but that was completely untrue; the nurses on the ward she was on had presumed she had a glioblastoma when she did not.

She is now in a care home at 67. She can say yes and no, occasionally hello, but most of her speech is gone. She cannot move her right arm or leg, she is incontinent and refuses to leave her bed. She has occasional seizures. Surgeon advised this week that the tumour is an aggressive form of meningioma; it's now almost 10cm, having grown 1.3cm in 10 months and is expanding in all directions. A MDT has advised that surgery is not an option and likely outcomes are death, or loss of remaining function. He cannot give us a timeline, but has told us that she will progressively get worse over time. We live 250 miles away, and MIL has cut all ties with all family aside from us and one of her siblings so there is limited family support and we have spent almost every weekend this year driving to/from our home to hers, impacting our jobs, our finances in terms of fuel, food and hotel bills and our teenage children.

My question is I guess, is if anyone has experienced similar and if so, what symptoms should we expect to see next? The only thing we've been advised is she will become gradually sleepier. She is on a low dose steroid for swelling, they had to wean her off the higher dose one because she was at risk of steroid-induced psychosis. It would be useful to understand what we might see next.

Thanks for reading if you got this far! X