My dad has stage 4 cancer and a tumor in his tongue. About two weeks ago my dad had to abandon his third course of chemotherapy after the first day as the drugs were causing blood clots, which could potentially have led to a heart attack. Since then he's been for a scan to assess his progress so far, and to help them devise a new course of treatment. I'm concerned about how much he's deteriorated in the past two weeks and that he needs to resume his treatment asap. He's in a lot of pain and can barely eat. He phoned the hospital but both his consultant and assigned nurse are on leave. And the other specialist hasn't got any availability this week to see him. I know it must be very bad for my dad to have actually phoned the hospital himself as he's very much the soldier on and don't complain type. He's still scheduled to begin his next treatment on 13th September although we have no idea what form that will take. The hospital arranged for some more strong pain medication but I'm really concerned that with how he's declining he's not going to make it to the 13th. My dad's not a very proactive person about getting himself help. You can't get him to do anything he doesn't want to do. Sometimes I feel so helpless watching him suffer and being powerless to help him
Hi PixieStyx
Sorry to read about your dad, I wonder if it might help him/you to ring our helpline as they may be able to provide some support.
I know what you mean about ringing the hospital - my wife tries to avoid them if at all possible so when she actually wants to go - things seem more worrying.
It can of course be hard to distinguish between things going down hill and side effects from chemotherapy. My wife's first type caused a lung to collapse but they managed to fix that, eventually, after 5 more runs to the hospital. Her second type of chemo though helped and now her cancer is stable and we have been living with cancer for 6 years now.
<<hugs>>
Steve
