Hi everyone,
I haven’t been around for a while so wanted to check in with an update on my brother who has stage 4 bowel cancer.
He was doing reasonably well on oral capecetabine, irinotecan and panitumubab. He went for his treatment last Thursday and had some sort of episode where he felt awful, was very light headed and he almost collapsed. He recovered and came home and told me about it. He hasn’t had panitumubab for a month due to his skin being in a state with an extensive rash which is a known side effect. He is awaiting an appointment with his oncologist which is a telephone appointment next week.
At the weekend he has had a stroke which has made his cancer treatment more complicated. Thankfully he got to hospital in time to have thrombolysis which has limited the damage, his only deficit at the moment is his speech is quite slow and he has to think about what he’s saying. The stroke team have stopped the capecetabine tablets, so the oncologist will need to decide the next steps. He had a ct scan of his abdomen when he went in for his chemo last week, and so naturally he is very anxious to know the results of that but whilst I support him in any way I can, I don’t think he could take bad news about his cancer at the minute. He said that if he hasn’t had a good response to the chemo so far, he’s not going to have any more. It may all be irrelevant anyway if the doctors think the stroke has been caused by the chemo drugs. He’s having an absolute nightmare at the moment.
