My father has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Not sure which is the primary, but will assume for now that it is the gullet. Unfortunately it had already spread to his Liver and Lungs.
I think everyone feels more positive now that we have seen the oncologist and my dad wants to try the palliative chemotherapy. (EOX) So, in preparation for the chemo starting on Monday 26th October, he is to be fitted with a stent on tuesday. We were expecting this to only take a few hours but he has been asked to take an overnight bag. The maximum number of EOX cycles he can have will be 8.
My dad is really looking forward to having the stent. It must be hell watching people eating meals in front of you when you are limited to whizzed soups, porridge and nutritional drinks.
My current concerns are pain control and my dad's ex-military attitude to pain. He is only on dissolvable paracetamol (only started taking them last week!) but is now admitting to pain made worse by coughing. He had a flu injection yesterday so just blames it all on that. Thankfully, after a horrendous night, today it seems to be not as bad (or perhaps he is just masking it better to stop us calling a GP). He still enjoys a rum and coke - I suspect that he is not willing to give this up completely until he can't stand the pain any longer. Part of me says "fine - enjoy it while you can" (at least it has calories!) but the bigger part of me says "Fool -please don't put up with any more pain than you have to". It is very hard to watch knowing that he is in pain but refusing to let us help him.
I would love to hear of your experience of pain control beyond paracetamol, also what to expect from the stent fitting. Also if anyone has had EOX.
