Hi all
My dad has recently been diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer. He has stage 4 prostate cancer that has been controlled through hormone depletion therapy and is nearly 90 years old. We know that the cancer is at least stage 3 as it has spread to one local node but his oncologist didn’t see the point in any scans to check for distant mets as my dad would be too frail to take the normal potentially curative chemoradiotherapy and/or surgery anyway. Instead he had a short course of radiotherapy two weeks ago in an attempt to palliate the dysphasia associated with the primary tumour. Unfortunately we think the treatment caused a lot of inflammation in the short term, he subsequently couldn’t eat at all and was hospitalised a week ago or fit a nasogastric tube. He’s managed to put some weight back on with the tube and is now hoping to have a PEG tube direct to his stomach fitted some time next week. More than anything he wants to go home and sees the PEG tube as a means to this end (as do I). My younger brother who is 50 lives at home with dad but, despite coping well with recent events, has his own mental health issues. My wife and I live on the other side of the country. The hospital says they will put a home care package in place and, if the PEG tube feeding were the only thing to consider, I can see have my dad and brother might cope. However, dad literally cannot swallow his own spit and phlegm even currently so needs to be ‘drained’ every so often and requires a nebuliser.
So, I have two questions that I wonder any of you kind folk might be able to help me with:
(I) Is a five day palliative course of radiation likely to achieve much in terms of tumour shrinkage and, if so, does anyone have any experience of how long this might take to take effect?
(ii) is it possible for someone in my dad’s position to be effectively cared for at home given the afore mentioned complexities?
It’s been a bit difficult to get coherent advice from dad’s nurses and the hospital generally so any advice would be really appreciated.
thanks ever so much.
EP
Hi EP. Sorry to hear about your dad. I can’t answer your first question. That’s one for the oncologist. What did they say?
It sounds like your dad will need quite a degree of care. Do you think how he is today is the best he is going to be? That’s one for his team too.
Is hospice at home available to you? That might be the answer if your dad and brother can have a visit a day.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful.
I hope you get an answer soon from the hospital and get him home. It’s where I would like to be Hugs
Dani
Base of tongue cancer. T2N0M0 6 weeks Radiotherapy finished January 2019
