Fernanda appreciates her mother’s endurance and attitude. Nonetheless, it is sometimes difficult when she relies mostly on Fernanda and refuses other help that is offered to her.

Transcript

It’s another life. You always hear of people, you always hear of people taking care of their parents or their sick children or anything—that it’s everybody else. And when you’re in there, I’ll tell you what, it has, it’s opened, it has taught me so much.  And I have to say that 13 years of this disease of my mother, my mother’s taught me more in 13 years of watching her than in the first 13 years because she is an amazing—she gets on my nerves, but she’s an amazing woman. She, no matter what the pain, she’s courteous and she’s strong and I can only hope that if ever it happens to me, that I can have her dignity and be half the person that she is, because she’s an amazing woman.

She’s endured so much, so much.  And you know how they say your parents always teach you “treat everybody with respect”? […] But it’s one thing to say it. It’s another one when you watch them actually do that. And not once—those nurses that we’ve known for 13 years—not once when they’re putting a needle in, she doesn’t say, “Thank you very much.” Or we take cake for them, or because when she goes, she says, “Bring them some donuts,” […] because they work so hard. So, there’s always a “please”, a “thank you”. We’re trying to make life easier for everybody else, but in the meantime it’s, “No, don’t worry about it. My daughter will do it.” So the daughter’s the one who ends up by doing everything. That’s still me.

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