My 88 year old mother has been diagnosed with nasal pharyngeal cancer 5 years ago and had palliative radiotherapy 5 months ago. She has severe headaches on both sides of the head, total hearing loss and fatigue. She is on many pain killers and oral pain killer and the palliative care nurse is talking about getting pain relief injections into the premises ready . We are her main carers and we are worried what next stages of this cancer we can look out for, the consultant has advised us that there is no further treatment, please can you give us any guidance. Many thanks
Sorry Victor to find you here in such a situation. I can't really help with end of life symptoms but I thought I'd at least welcome you here. My reply will bump your post up so somebody else might read it.
Maybe the answers you seek will be from your mother's palliative care nurse, or if she has no experience of this rare cancer perhaps you could contact the clinical nurse specialist who was in charge of her care while she was in treatment.
If nothing else it must surely be important to make sure pain relief is adequate so that's another aspect to discuss. You might want to consider hospice care which often can be simply respite for a while.
I hope you find the help that you all need
Dani
Base of tongue cancer. T2N0M0 6 weeks Radiotherapy finished January 2019
