After potentially avoidable hospital interventions, Mom's doing better

Akroger

I don't like smugness, especially having an "I told you so" feeling over anything relating to my mom's cancer, so I hope the scare of the past few days will convince my parents to take my concerns more seriously going forward. My mom finally relented and agreed to see her oncologist two days earlier than she was scheduled to, so my dad took her in on Monday, and I left work early to go meet them, at 4:30pm (later than I would have liked). When I arrived at her hospital room I was greeted by a state of pandemonium as my dad burst from the room shouting at me to get a coffee cup. I was in a bit of shock and completely clueless as to where they kept the coffee cups in this part of the hospital. It turns out my mom was vomitting horribly, had been in fact ever since 2pm that day, and she was so weak and miserable that whenever she was able to pause to take a breath, she'd gasp out, alternately in English or Greek, something along the lines of "I can't do this anymore," "Just let this be over," "I want to die." In short, my mom had to stay that evening for over 2 hours to get potassium and fluids through an IV, as well as fluconazole for her thrush. The oncologist agreed that while the irinotecan had been proving to be very effective in shrinking her tumors and stopping further metastatsis, that the current mix was too much for my mom to handle and that they'd have to look at other options. My mom had to go in to the hospital yesterday too for another five hours of IV, and she feels a lot better now, though obviously still weak and her throat still isn't feeling great. She's been prescribed Nystatin to further remedy her thrush and hopefully the sores will go away and she can start eating soon.

The really good news is that I finally got release of medical information authorization forms cleared yesterday, because the difficulty of communication with the doctor has been driving me nuts, and now at least I feel like I have some more control to prevent something like this from happening again.

UncleBuddy

Sorry that you went through this.

Cancer sucks! My brother had a lot of complications from the chemo (he was on Folfiri) so they had to reduce the dosage and eliminate a couple of the meds. He is stable now and has quality of life. His lung nodules have progressed a little bit, so they may have to up the dosage a little bit. His liver tumor is going to be checked with an MRI on Monday. It is terrible to watch our loved ones in so much pain. I wish they would find a cure already. I hope mom feels better and they're able to come up with a good plan that works for her.

Lin

Trubrit

Caregivers

We have so any woderful, loving, caring daugters, sons and spouses on this site, and you are among them. 

How blessed you mum is to have you by her side. Even if she doesn't listen to you. 

I pray that now she will be more mindful of how devestating these cancer drugs can be. Remind her that it is the DRUGS and NOT the CANCER that caused her problems. It is all too easy to blame the disease. She has to be 100% on board with the Doctors, telling them EVERYTHING that she is experiencing. At the rate she was going, she could have died from the meds and not the cancer, and who wants that. 

Ah, we are all pretty stubborn at times, so let this pass and I'm sure you will find that she is more clued in to her health and her life. There is nothing like getting to the point where you WANT to die, to make you realize that your WANT to live. 

Bless you, sweet daughter. 

Nana b

Trubrit said:

Caregivers

We have so any woderful, loving, caring daugters, sons and spouses on this site, and you are among them. 

How blessed you mum is to have you by her side. Even if she doesn't listen to you. 

I pray that now she will be more mindful of how devestating these cancer drugs can be. Remind her that it is the DRUGS and NOT the CANCER that caused her problems. It is all too easy to blame the disease. She has to be 100% on board with the Doctors, telling them EVERYTHING that she is experiencing. At the rate she was going, she could have died from the meds and not the cancer, and who wants that. 

Ah, we are all pretty stubborn at times, so let this pass and I'm sure you will find that she is more clued in to her health and her life. There is nothing like getting to the point where you WANT to die, to make you realize that your WANT to live. 

Bless you, sweet daughter. 

It's progress, glad she is

It's progress, glad she is getting some care.   Hope her will to live gets better too, it's so important in this fight.    Since that cocktail is working can't they just lower the dose some?  

 

 

LindaK.

Hope she's doing better each day

Glad she finally got some much needed care.  Dehydration can be really bad on the mind and body.  I hope she's feeling better each day.

Linda