My mum has stage 4 lung small cell lung cancer that has spread to her liver and her back and for the last 6/7 weeks she’s been sleeping on average 16 hours a day. The most recent results we got on the 17th October after treatment showed the cancer had reduced slightly in the lungs but a few new spots appeared in the liver. The consultant called it a mixed bag was happy enough for immunotherapy treatment to continue and she had the first one around four weeks ago. She has had bad back pain for about 9 weeks limiting her movement which resulted in trips to A&E, the doctors and finally to Christies ICU last week. She’s now on co codamol 4 times a day. This has helped the back pain a lot. My mum said she was sleeping to stop the back pain initially but she’s still sleeping all the time even with the co codamol.
I know sleeping constantly is a sign of end of life but yesterday we went to Christies again for another scan and on the way home we went to Dunelm and JYSK and she was walking around wanted to couch shop! Leaning on the trolley helps her movement. When we got home she slept for another two hours. She went to bed at 11 and is still asleep now at 11:07.
I ask her how she is all the time and she says she doesn’t feel ill but just really tired. She is responsive and answers whenever I speak to her.
Her appetite has reduced but she also doesn’t take a lot of fluids on and when she does it’s tea and coffee. I think that contributes a lot to the lack of energy.
im just really unsure as to what to do which is why I joined this forum.
Welcome to our community, I hope you find it both informative and supportive.
I am Steve one of the community champions and my experience of cancer is via my wife who has Leiomysarcoma so a bit different type to your mum.
New to the community is a bit like t - he welcome mat with the community divided up into quite a number of groups. You would be most welcome to look at/post in Lung cancer forum for any questions around that type of cancer but for you then perhaps you might like to join Carers only forum Family and friends forum and Supporting someone with incurable cancer forum
We do often see people asking if something or other is a sign that the end is near but in practice is is really difficult to know - even expert doctors in hospices are often surprised.
Perhaps the most important thing any of us can do is keep talking and especially listening.
<<hugs>>
Steve
