I got back to Cairo after almost eight weeks of travel, and my mom had what looked like a stroke basically the day before I arrived home.
So instead of coming home and reintegrating—which I already needed after almost two months of travelling—I got thrown immediately into this whirlwind of tests as my mom’s motor skills began rapidly declining. Her right arm. Her right leg. Her speech. Her balance.
First we were encouraged to get an MRI. Then an MRI with contrast. Then an MRS, the spectroscopy. Then consultations. Then finally the Gamma Knife surgeon.
Taking my mother around Cairo through all these tests, even with support inside the medical system, was a certain kind of hell. But honestly, what was worse was watching the doctors’ faces.
Every time somebody opened her scans, their face basically said holy shit or what the hell is this?
I watched doctors looking at each other confused. Asking each other questions. Looking back at the screen.
As a lifelong movement artist, dancer and yoga teacher, I’ve spent most of my life deciphering body language. There were no lines to read between here. It was crystal clear.
Something was very wrong.
By the time we got to the Gamma Knife surgeon, he took me into another room away from my mom and told me that the tumor was inoperable. It occupies essentially the full brain stem and is stretching part of the pons.
And then the next conversation became oncology and radiation.
During all of this testing, I’m watching my mother’s condition rapidly decline in front of me.
Drooling. Her eyes unfocused. Speech becoming extremely difficult. Losing the use of her right hand. Her right leg becoming increasingly unresponsive. Tilting to one side. Losing her center of gravity completely.
And yet she was still listening to her audiobooks at 1.5 speed.
That detail keeps getting me.
Her brain was still her in there while her body seemed to be disconnecting from it.
She couldn’t walk independently anymore. She couldn’t write. Reading became difficult. She needed help going to the bathroom. Help washing. Help eating. Help with almost everything.
My mother was an incredibly capable woman physically. She was a tank.
She raised seven children. She worked on a farm. She worked constantly. And, in my opinion, my father took more work from her than was decent.
I’ve lived in Egypt for the past five and a half years, and this was something I fought with my dad about many times. Watching the amount of labor my mother carried made me furious long before she became sick.
So now I have to watch this woman who spent her entire life carrying everyone suddenly unable to carry herself.
And my mind keeps trying to make meaning out of that.
I know intellectually that I cannot say my mother’s life or marriage caused her brain tumor. That’s not something medicine can tell me.
But emotionally, artistically, symbolically?
All I can see sometimes is my mother’s internal story becoming physical in the most horrific possible way.
A woman who carried too much for too long develops a tumor in the place connecting her brain to her body.
It feels like the darkest possible timeline.
⸻
Then came radiation.
And this is where I’ve started questioning a lot of what I actually believe about medicine, mortality, hope and truth.
At one consultation, they were telling my mother she was going to do great. Maybe she would walk again. Stay positive.
Then they took me into the finance room and basically tried to put the entire cost of treatment on my card without anybody having properly explained to me what the prognosis actually was.
That did not go well.
I told them they better close the door because what I was about to say was going to be loud.
After my little explosion, the doctor took me into another room and finally told me what I had been asking.
Realistically, my mother was unlikely to return to normal.
Maybe there would be some improvement from where she is now.
But she would likely remain significantly disabled.
And I thought: why the fuck was nobody saying this?
Because I actually think hope and truth can exist at the same time.
You can tell somebody, we’re going to try.
You can say, maybe radiation will give you some improvement.
You can say, we don’t know exactly what will happen.
But if you know that somebody is unlikely to regain meaningful independence, don’t they deserve to know that too?
At what point does keeping someone optimistic become withholding information they need to decide how they want to spend whatever time they have?
I genuinely don’t know.
And I would actually love to hear from people who have been through this.
Is it better to tell someone, You’re going to get better. Keep fighting. Keep doing the treatments?
Or at some point do you say, This may be what life looks like now. What do you want?
Because I am discovering that I have very complicated feelings about radiation and chemotherapy, particularly when disease is already extremely advanced. I understand their value. I understand trying to reduce a tumor, relieve symptoms or gain meaningful time.
But meaningful is the word I keep coming back to.
Meaningful to whom?
What constitutes meaningful life? Meaningful improvement? Meaningful time?
And who gets to decide?
⸻
Meanwhile, while I’m having philosophical revelations about mortality, I’m also washing my mother, toileting her, feeding her, moving her, giving injections and waking up through the night.
So this isn’t exactly an intellectual exercise.
I’m the oldest of seven children. Four of my siblings have come to Cairo, and I absolutely have support.
But I’m also the oldest daughter.
And I’m a mother myself.
Anyone from a big family—or probably any Middle Eastern family—knows exactly what that means.
There is the work everyone sees.
And then there is all the fucking work that somehow just appears in your hands.
I’m tired.
Actually, tired isn’t the word.
I feel like I’m on the brink of going insane sometimes.
And on top of everything else, I don’t currently have a place where I feel completely safe and relaxed.
I’ve been staying in my family home because my mother likes having me here.
My father and I do not get along.
He is an old-world Egyptian man, but he was also a sailor and, let’s say, not exactly the romantic kind.
His views on women and my existence as his daughter have never mixed particularly well.
And there is this horrible thought underneath everything that I don’t even like admitting:
My father might outlive my mother.
That makes me furious.
It scares me too, because if my mother dies before him, I genuinely don’t know what my relationship with this house or this family structure looks like afterward.
So while I’m trying to process potentially losing my mother, I’m simultaneously experiencing housing insecurity, career insecurity and the feeling that I don’t really have a safe home base to collapse into.
Maybe that’s why I’m writing all of this.
Maybe I’m trying to justify how I feel.
Maybe I’m asking permission.
Maybe I just want other people who have gone through this to tell me what the hell they did.
⸻
Because now comes the question I can’t stop asking myself.
How much of my own life am I supposed to give up?
Traditionally, culturally, religiously—especially in Islam—caring for your parents is one of the highest honors.
I believe that.
But what does caring actually mean?
Does caring for my mother mean I personally have to wash her?
Does it mean I have to take her to the bathroom at 3 AM?
Does it mean cancelling six months of work?
A year?
How long?
And if someone has the financial ability to hire excellent professional care, is it actually more loving for the daughter to become the nurse anyway?
Or is that guilt?
Culture?
Fear?
Love?
Probably some horrible cocktail of all four.
Alhamdulillah, my mother has the money to afford a very high level of private care in Egypt.
And I am deeply grateful for that.
For all the problems I’ve encountered navigating this system, I also have to say that the speed and technology available privately here have been incredible. My mother went from initial imaging through advanced scans, specialists and radiation planning in roughly two weeks.
In Canada, we might still be waiting for appointments.
So we have options.
Which means maybe my job isn’t to sacrifice myself.
Maybe my job is to make sure the right people are taking care of her.
Maybe I can be her daughter again.
⸻
As I write this, I’m actually on a timeout from my siblings.
We were interviewing a nurse today.
She was feeding my mother for the first time and suddenly picked up her phone and started calling somebody.
I was like, who are you calling?
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I told her to get out immediately.
I raised my voice.
My siblings basically said, Okay. Go upstairs.
LOL.
So I am who I am.
I am fiercely protective of my mother. I am watching everything. I notice everything. And maybe being in that state 24 hours a day isn’t particularly good for anyone anymore.
Maybe my mother needs professional caregivers.
And maybe she needs me to visit her as her daughter.
Maybe I sit beside her and listen to an audiobook.
Maybe I bring her something she likes.
Maybe we laugh.
Maybe I advocate when something is wrong.
Maybe I make sure she’s comfortable and treated with dignity.
And then maybe I leave.
Because there is another thing I haven’t really talked about.
My work.
I’m a freelance artist.
I don’t have paid compassionate leave.
If I don’t work, I don’t make money.
And the work I do now creates the work I will have next year. Workshops lead to workshops. Travel leads to opportunities. Relationships have to be maintained. Events are booked months in advance.
I haven’t worked for the past month.
And I love my work.
My work is not something I’m trying to escape into because I hate my family.
My work brings me joy.
It is something I built.
It has taken me around the world.
And in many ways, I think it represents a life my mother never had the opportunity to live herself.
Before she declined this far, she said something to me:
“Just keep being you.”
I keep thinking about that.
What does that mean now?
Does “being me” mean staying beside her every day because I might lose her?
Or does it mean doing exactly what she told me to do?
Keep being me.
Keep making things.
Keep teaching.
Keep travelling.
Keep dancing.
Keep building this strange life I’ve somehow built.
⸻
I don’t believe the death of a parent should require the death of the child who survives them.
But I also don’t want to look back and feel like I abandoned my mother when she needed me.
Those two fears are sitting beside each other every day.
Maybe there isn’t a clean answer.
Maybe this isn’t one of those situations where there is a right decision and a wrong decision.
Maybe there are only decisions we make with the information, capacity and love we have at the time.
I don’t know.
I’m literally in the middle of this.
Nothing is certain.
My mother has started radiation. We don’t know exactly how she will respond. We don’t know how much time there is. We don’t know what improvement might happen.
And my work involves international travel, which makes every decision feel ten times bigger.
But I am beginning to wonder whether arranging excellent care for someone you love and then continuing to live your own life is not abandonment at all.
Maybe that is also caregiving.
Maybe sitting beside your mother as her daughter for two beautiful hours is worth more than spending twenty-four hours beside her becoming exhausted, resentful and terrified that someone is doing something wrong.
I don’t know yet.
This isn’t a lesson from the other side.
It’s a brain dump from the middle.
And maybe I’m sharing it because there are people out there who have already walked through this particular fire.
If you have cared for a dying or severely disabled parent—especially while raising children, working freelance, living abroad, navigating complicated family dynamics or trying to maintain your own life—I genuinely want to know:
What did you do?
What do you wish you had done differently?
Did you stay?
Did you work?
Did you hire help?
Did you feel guilty?
And when it was finally over, what actually mattered?
Because right now I don’t know.
I love my mother.
I want her treated with dignity.
I want her safe.
I want her loved.
And somewhere inside all of this, I am also trying to remember that she told me:
Just keep being you.
