Weight loss

Hi RachelL Get your husband to ask for better anti sickness and see if his dieticians can arrange a feed pump. This will deliver his food slowly via the pump, hopefully minimising the nausea. I was terribly nauseous for most of my treatment and a good deal afterwards. For me I think the morphine made it much worse but there was no way I could do without it. Can I presume that your husband is having a seventh week of RT? Radiotherapy has a residual effect for 3 weeks after treatment end so it"s worth asking about the pump. 

Thank you.  He has the feed pump but there’s a lot of mental and emotional hurdles with cancer and this seems to be the case for him.  The Christmas period has just extended the 35 sessions a little.  
Thank you for the blog - it helps a carer understand more when our loved ones are too sick to explain some things.

Pleased to hear you are through the same basal tumour he has.

Ah...bless you Rachel. It's hard for you too. I think on the whole that the girls seem to do better in accepting help and doing what their team tells them. The fellas have a lot to prove and it's a difficult hump to get over. I try to tell people that they are not fighting the cancer. That is the job of their medical team and they are very good at it. The patient fights the treatment and fights to stay sane. It's hard. It's hard to admit you have no control and some people fight really hard to keep some. Honest it will get better. The next few weeks are a real challenge but you will both get there.

Theres's a good article by psychologist Dr Peter Harvey which is worth reading. It resonates with a lot of us

AFTER TREATMENT

Thanks.  The constant encouragement and gentle insistence that he must feed and get the nutrients in is a particular battleground.   I’m wondering if the thick secretions are compounding the sick feeling as the anti-sickness seems to be quite settling, now you have mentioned them.  The nebuliser seems to be on about x5 a day currently, but I’ll ask about other thinners maybe today.  

Carbocysteine is what some of us used. My mucous was never that bad, thankfully. I used fizzy ginger ale or diet coke with some of the bubbles stirred out to help loosen the sticky stuff....and spat a lot...... Try to get as much in place as you can this week. When his treatment finishes the wrap around care drops off too and it's a lonely place till his next appointment which is likely to be six weeks away.

Hugs

Hi Rachell

T2N1M0 tonsil cancer. 30  radiotherapies 4 Chemo

Sickness eased off gradually, different timescales for everybody, anti sickness meds worked well but dose frequency was altered (taken more often) by oncology team.

PEG feeding via Abbott pump helped greatly.

Peter