I've struggled with depression and anxiety for 3/4 of my life, plus several manic episodes over the years. I guess I've been through a lot of stress in the last year or so. Back in SeptemberI spent 10 days in the psych unit (I self-admitted) and had to drop my practicum and one other class, but managed to get through the semester. I had been doing better, in spite of having to end therapy because I didn't have money to continue. It was really hard to say goodbye to my therapist, but I had started a new job and was preoccupied with that. Then, about a month ago, my mom went into the ER with severe chest pains, and the doctors found that she has a blood clot on her right lung. She started taking blood thinners, but was back in the ER a week later with her heart rate down to 47. I had to go over to my parents house that morning to turn of the stove because in their rush to go to the hospital my dad had left a pot on the stove with the burner on. The entire first floor of their house was filled with smoke. Once I took care of that I went to the hospital to be with my parents until my mom was deemed safe to go home and was discharged. Two weeks later we found out that my brother-in-law has a 9 cm mass on his adrenal gland as well as a mass on one lung and another on a lymph node. We are still waiting for test results, but he is in massive amounts of pain and off work indefinitely. He and my sister have 3 young children. Even if it's not cancer, he will still have to come to Vancouver for surgery to remove the mass on his adrenal gland, which apparently is a risky operation.