Chemo Update

Karen, my heart goes out to you, husband and your family. I normally do not comment on this board because I have no experience in the more invasive type bladder cancer and the systemic chemo done and hope to never have to experience it. It is certainly a hard road for people to tread. Has your husband been offered Ativan or the generic lorazapan? Not many doctors offer it except those very involved in anxiety treatment and/or chemo treatment. The drug has a dual purpose that immediately settles anxiety and also helps with nausea. It also stops my pain in the chest area caused from my bracing when anxious. Studies have shown that anti-anxiety meds can alone stop pain. I have been prescribed it for anxiety and it works well without the doped up feeling. Many PC’s will not prescribe because they either lack the knowledge of the dynamics of it or because they think it too addictive it is best to talk his oncologist or psychologist. I took xanax for a while but did feel doped up and had long and wild dreams every night. I know several people with cancer and having anxiety who found Ativan to work wonders for them. Rosie

Hi Karen,

It's a smart thing to do, take the nausea meds before the nausea hits. The same concept applies to pain meds too...and when there is pain present, the narcotic-like effect of painkillers is much less and the pain sort of balances things out. Pain meds will make a person "stoned" when there isn't pain, but just help them feel normal in the presence of pain. So if your husband is in pain he shouldn't hesitate to try the pain meds...unless of course they make him feel worse than he does without them.

Wishing you and your husband the best,
Wendy

Hi Karen
Glad your husbands survived the first round with chemo fairly well.It is hard when you have young children at home my youngest two are similar ages and it was tough trying to keep things relatively normal for them and I didnt have the bone pain to deal with.That must be really hard to deal with.
Enjoy this week off I can remember them feeling like holidays and we tried to plan nice things to do whilst I almost human.Your husband is lucky to have you there as support I couldnt have got through without my husband family and friends they were fantastic.Even on the days where I was evil to everyone.
If I can help at all let me know
Love Claire

Hi everyone,

First I would like to thank everyone for their support. my husband (47 yrs. old) has finished his first round of Chemo. We are on the off week, the next round starts on Thurs. He gets a combo of Cispatin and Gemzar for the first week, and then just Gemzar for the other 2 weeks, then off a week. Over all it went fairly well. He was given 25 mg. of Promethazine for nausea. The prescription said to take every six hours as needed for nausea. We decided (and asked the dr.) if it would be ok to just take the pills every six hours and avoid nausea all together. Well it worked. He didn't suffer from nausea at all. He was alittle "cloudy" for the first few days after the combo, but the weeks with just Gemzar went well. He lost 6 lbs between the combo week and the following week, but gained back 8 on the off week. He has been tired and in a bit of pain since the cancer is in the bone. Mainly effecting the lower back, hips and legs at the moment. He was given Oxycodine, but has mainly been taking ibuprophen for pain and xanax for anxiety. The combination seems to be working well, and he has maintained his appetite (thank God!) He is almost back to his usual self this week except for the fact that he had a fall. We had a few of those plastic stack chairs we were using on the back porch, well the back legs broke and down he went. It really increased the pain in the area, but thankfully he didn't break anything. He is trying so hard to keep to a normal day as we still have little ones home (a 7 yr. old girl, and a 3 1/2 yr old boy) By avoiding the narcotics we have found that the pain is worth the moments of clarity that are necessary to have a semi normal life during this process. We know there will probably come a time when we cannot avoid them any longer but for now it works for us. I think about all of you and what you are going through as well, my thoughts and prayers are with all of you.

Karen