| I'm sorry that this is happening to you and your family. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in my final year of university. She had surgery and chemo and had an 80% chance of permanent remission. In my third year working as a SWE, her cancer returned. She lived another year. A minister visited us the morning after she passed. They said some things that I needed to hear: Death is common. Grief is part of life. The pain lessens with time. Here's my advice to you: 1. You will have inconsistent productivity and lower overall productivity. Talk openly with your manager about it. Every two weeks, have a 5-minute one-on-one meeting with them and ask for their opinion on your recent performance and their expectations. If your manager is unwilling to do this, then switch teams or jobs ASAP. 2. Talk with a trained therapist once every 1-2 weeks. They can teach you critical skills. Attend the free 10-day Goenka Vipassana meditation course. I did both of these things years later. I wish I had done them earlier. Also help your family members to get therapy and learn the skills, especially your father. 3. Dedicate some time every week to researching your mother's disease and treatment. Frankly, humanity's knowledge of cancer is still rudimentary. You can learn it. Clinicians just do what they learned in med school. You can find the researchers who specialize in your mother's particular kind of cancer, read their papers, contact them, and get her into a trial. If I had done this, my mother could have participated in one of the early trials of the TIL cancer treatment [0] and could possibly have been cured. 4. Call and visit your family members more frequently. Take short selfie videos with your mom. Also take short videos of her with people you care for. Take trips together. Send your Mom & Dad on a nice vacation. I recommend Waikiki. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor-infiltrating_lymphocytes |