Tuesday 12 January 2010

Velcade Cycle 2

Dad was actually released after 5 days and not 2 weeks. As he was feeling a little stronger he was given Chemo just before he left! And was back at work after the weekend. AMAZING. There was no hanging about and he is feeling and looking great might I add.

I have been reading up on various on quite a few different things recently when I came across a product called Mel- Life Honey. Now the site makes some pretty amazing claims about its ability to avoid patient’s counts from dropping during chemo, and how it has helped people to recover from Cancer. Clinging on to hope I bought 2 jars at £37.50 a jar it wasn’t cheap but if it worked id buy him an oceans worth. Anyhoo he spoke with a Doctor yesterday and they instructed him not to take it as there were not sure how it would work with the many other drugs that he is taking……Is it worth the risk after all it is only honey! But the answer is NO. His is liver is not at 100 % and no one knows for sure if it will do any harm.

If anyone else does happen to try this I would be interested to hear your experiences with it.

Tuesday 5 January 2010

A&E dash

We rushed dad to A&E this weekend with a temperature of 103. He had been complaining about a sore throat for a few days and said that it felt like he had lacerations in his throat. He had his chemo passport with him so we were rushed through within 10 minutes of arriving. As there were no beds in Oncology he was placed in the Acute Assessment Unit ( after 6 hours on an uncomfortable A&E bed). After 15 hours his temperature hadn’t come down and went up to 105 even with all the antibiotics and fluids he was being pumped up with. He has not been able to eat for 3 days now because of his throat and gags even when he tries to drink a tiny drop of water, it turns out the sore throat was a bad case of thrush.

He has a conditional called neutropenia which is very common apparently for people having chemotherapy, so has been given injections into his stomach to help speedily create white cells, and morphine swabs to help with the pain in his throat.

He has only had one course of Velcade so far. I wish he had taken it easy after the treatment but he doesnt want to be beaten by MM and refuses to let it. It is important for him to realise that although he is fighting this, he needs to listen to his body too and let it heal. He hates being in hospital and was hoping he would be sent home with a few drugs but it looks like it will be more like 2 weeks before they let him out.