Parenting full circle

Odd title, yes, I am aware thank you. I have had a theory for a long time now and said if I ever did a masters or PhD paper I would research this phenom. I call it full circle parenting. It works essentially that you start out as a child with a parent, you grow up and your relationship changes from parent/child to peer and then is destine to become child/parent where the child parents the parent. Does that make any sense?

I see it actually happening more and more in my relationship with my parents and I have to say, parenting my 4 year old is an awful lot like parenting my parents. They are in their 60's and early 70's (I think...isn't that terrible, I don't really know how old my own parents are. I think my mom will forever be 45, but since I'm heading to that age soon, she must be older by now). I live a considerable distance from my mom and dad, but talk to them often. Mom has been sick a lot lately and it worries me for several reasons: 1) she has never taken decent care of herself. 2). She had breast cancer in 1996. 3) Uncontrolled diabetes mellitus for a number of years (though I have been told her numbers are normal now) and 4) a recent history of kidney problems.

So when she tells me she has been sick for a while and now the docs want an MRI or CT scan I get nervous. Maybe 4 years of typing medical reports for oncologists makes bells ring for me or maybe I know she is given to bouts of misinforming me of circumstances. She tells me they think she has a brain tumor. Ok, mom is so not high drama, so I wonder, since I have not seen her in about 9 months, if she has some strange growth on her noggin the size and shape of a pineapple that would make them wonder this. She says she is having headaches. (she has ALWAYS had headaches).

So I tried my best nag to get her to go get the MRI or CT, whatever it was they wanted to do, to no avail. She says she does not want to know. Isn't that special.

So the parent turned child is nagged by the child now turned mother (and many many years of this, I remember many a times as an 11 year old comforting my mom about stuff. I was the first one she told about the cancer and we prayed together for the first time ever at her request...on and on really). So do I let it go and know she is an adult, I believe still fully capable of making her own decisions or do I nag (like a mother would nag) until she does something.

Parenting a 4 year old is eaiser, his butt I can spank....my mom's....well, she is too far away.