So far away

nystretch
nystretch Member Posts: 2
edited March 2014 in Caregivers #1
My sister was diagnosed and treated for her lung cancer with some experimental treatments. She's been cancer free for almost 3 years now. However, she suffers from such excruciating pains in her head that the pain has started to take over her life. She's gone from doctor to doctor and has found no relief. She talks about suicide from time to time and I worry about her all the time. While we are close, she unfortunately lives 1700 miles away which makes things harder. I don't know what to do to help her anymore. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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  • dickl
    dickl Member Posts: 39
    #2
    nystrech,
    Are these severe migraines ? Has she seen a neurologist? My son is a 7 year survivor of leukemia and had a bone marrow transplant. He had migraines prior to cancer but after all the chemo they got much worse and more frequent. He had 15-20 a month. They would cause him to vomit,unable to hold anything down, extreme pain to where he
    was screaming , sensitive to light. His life was in ruins and I felt he might kill himself and I couldn't blame him. Finally his pediatric neurologist found a treatment that stopped him from having them. He hasn't had a severe headache in almost 2 years. He gets headaches that aspirin cures instead of trips to the ER with iv narcotics and anti-nausea meds. Even if they are not headaches has she ever used narcotics for pain control. There are drugs that can give pain relief for 12 hours per dose. These are strong addictive drugs but can give some relief that may make life worth living. Her doctor can manage and prescribe these kind of treatments. It is very frequently used for people with severe long term pain problems.
    Let me know if any of this info might be useful or anything that I can help with. I've seen pain ruin peoples lives and doctors sometimes won't use narcotics because of the bad press they get because of drug abusers.

    dickl

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