Next month it will be ONE WHOLE year since I've seen my mum. Some of you know that I'm very close to my mum and she lives over 700km away from me down at the South Coast of South Africa. I miss her every day and we talk on the phone at least once or twice a week. Click HERE to find out when she visited last year.So much has happened since then...My dad had a major car accident where he suffered a bad head and knee injury and took forever to recover. My mum landed up in hospital with pneumonia and has been suffering with her back ever since. She called me on Thursday last week to say she'd been back to the doctor thinking it was just her normal arthritis in her back. The doc put her on anti inflamatory and pain meds for a week but nothing improvied so she went back and he ordered x-rays.Well, the xrays came back and my mum's been diagnosed with severe osteoperosis in her back and her vertabrae have collapsed and are crumbling. Some of the vertabrae are actually fractured from leaning on one another for so long. She needs to have a MRI done to figure out in detail the damage and then she'll have to have Vertebroplasty surgergy.The ortheopedic specialist said that her spine is so deteriorated that they only thing they can do for her at this stage is injection acrylic cement into her vertabrae so that they can realign her vertabrae and alleviate her chronic pain she has constantly. Sounds painful and quite drastic!I'm terrified! I want to be there for her when she has the surgery. She conceals her pain well and always wants to appear strong and "fine" but I want to be there to help her. This is going to be huge for her and a long recovery. I know my mum is strong but she's a tiny wee woman and looks so frail. She hates taking any kind of medication because it makes her throw up and she can't afford to throw up because she's trying so hard to put on weight. Its a vicious cycle.I miss her so much and want to be there for her.