What to expect for family member about to undergo chemo and immunotherapy treatment

Hi Orange,

I went through immunotherapy (no chemo) while living on my own so I know what it's like.

He might need help with attending appointments. After a while a treatment every three weeks gets to be a real grind and time consuming not just to attend but also to recover after. A couple of days lost every three weeks tends to build up after a while. He'll need check with his consultant but he might need to surrender his driving licence depending on diagnosis, symptoms and side effects.

As to how incapacitated, that's a real lottery - some just shrug it off like it was nothing, others are forced to stop, no way of predicting how it will go. Suck it and see.

Kind regards
Steve

Thanks for your feedback Steve. It’s appreciated. I hope you are okay. 

Hi Steve, 

Hope you are okay, hats off for doing treatment alone, i just read your page and congrats on the cancer free! My dad has just begun immunotherapy (no chemo), so i had a couple of questions if thats okay?

While undergoing immuno with your stage 4 were you still able to live a fairly normal life? Since pre-diagnosis my dad has been unable to do anything, moving from one room to another is a task in itself and I just wondered what your experience was like? He has only had 1 session so far with his next one in 2 weeks. Did the side effects hit quite instantly or take a while to appear? 

Thanks in advance

Hi Arc,

Thanks - so far so good, I'm now waiting on my first post-op scan(s). Going through this on my own turned out to be an advantage - I had the freedom to be completely selfish and focussed on survival.

While I was on the Keytruda I tried to stay as active as I could. The drug doesn't actually do anything to the cancer, it just switches in the immune system and staying active is one of the main things that stimulates the immune system to do its job. I also increased my protein intake to ensure I would be able to make as many white blood cells as needed.

Easier said than done, of course. Creatine monohydrate helped with my energy levels, it took a while before I hit on that. I'm an exercise nut anyway so that stood me in good stead.

I had a range of immuno side effects, and I twigged that they weren't me doing anything wrong but instead were my changed immune system complaining for no reason at things that should have been fine. They mostly kicked in pretty much straight away with a few late developers after. Isolating the triggers for side effect symptoms took ages, I ran it like a school O level chemistry experiment.

Luckily for me the stage 4 bit was spread to a brain tumour that was operable with no long term issues, so that didn't affect the rest of my treatment. If it had spread somewhere else I might have been in real trouble.

kind regards,
Steve