My mom was just diagnosed out of nowhere with stage 4b endometrial cancer

She’s 65. One minute she was running around with my toddler, and the next she was in the ER with lower back pain and numbness in the saddle area. In the span of just a week multiple MRIs and various other testing showed tumors not only in her uterus but all up and down her spine, in her lungs, in her brain, and all around her skull.

This has come out of nowhere. She said her obgyn did note some thickening of her endometrial wall in 2022 and she has known she’s had fibroids for at least ten years now. But it was never communicated to her that this could be an early sign of cancer. No further testing was done. I get so angry when I read the 5 year survival rates - they are so high in the beginning, for the early stages. I want to punch my first through a wall that this was so treatable just a few years ago, when we simply had no idea.

This is all fresh and I am really, really struggling. I’m a scientist and an atheist… data usually comforts me and the data about cancer as advanced as hers is just so bleak. I’m also pregnant, and haven’t told her yet- it’s a girl, due two days before her birthday. Go fucking figure.

I’m not really sure what I’m looking for here. I’d love to hear from others who are fighting a stage as advanced as hers, and kicking ass. But it just seems like she’s been handed a death sentence. Everything I’m reading is giving her median prognosis in MONTHS. I haven’t stopped crying since last Saturday.