Worried my husband’s unusual errors may indicate oesophageal cancer has spread to his brain

Recent biopsy results and an initial CT scan confirmed my husband has oesophageal cancer. He is now waiting for a PET scan (tomorrow) and an ultrasound endoscopy next week before doctors can establish the size of the tumour and offer more info and a treatment plan. Prior to this diagnosis, my husband had CT scans from his neck to his groin and these indicated there are no other malignancies in his torso, abdomen etc.

However, I’m worried the cancer may already have spread to his brain. In the weeks lending up to his diagnosis, he was sometimes forgetful (eg didn’t lock the front door and couldn’t remember a word) and he made a couple of strange remarks but I put this down to stress and the pain he’s been in as he also has psoriatic arthritis. These mistakes have escalated in the past few days and he has said some very odd things that are totally out of character for him as he’s usually very clever and thinks carefully before speaking.  For example, he said he wanted fish and chips for supper and insisted there was a fish and chip shop in our village when there is not and never has been one here!  It took me several minutes to gently persuade him where the nearest one actually is. Then he suddenly realised I was right and got quite annoyed with himself saying, “I have no idea what made me think that!”  Yesterday, he  offered our daughter a biscuit saying, “Would you like a Muslin?” When she asked him to repeat the question, he said this again, and got quite indignant when she started laughing and asking him what he was on about. Then he suddenly realised he’d made a mistake and became quite anxious, telling us he had no idea what had possessed him to call a biscuit a muslin. 

I’m trying to tell myself these strange things are due to stress and pain but thirty years ago my husband’s mother had breast cancer then, despite a radical mastectomy, died of secondary brain tumours. I have no idea whether this is relevant but I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about this and it has been playing on my mind ever since. I think I will ring Ben, the specialist nurse at our hospital team, as soon as he is available this morning. He has already been a wonderful source of support to us both so I want to run this past him just in case it would be a good idea for tomorrow’s PET scan to include scanning the brain as well as the torso. In the meantime, if anyone has any experience of this, I’d be grateful.