Really need your prayers and thoughts--my wife went into the hospital yesterday for fluids to treat dehydration. We found out she has a blockage. This morning she passed out, vomited, and aspirated. She's now in ICU and still unconscious. Her vitals are okay, but they haven't explained why she is un...

Both of you have gone back to earlier chemos before trying Stivarga, yes? Did you have any improvement during those second tries?

This is probably going to be long and go off on a rant, so let me ask my questions up front. I’d be very grateful if anyone here has insights on any of the following: Has anyone had success returning to a previous chemo (IN my wife’s case, going back to Folfox with Avastin after Irinotecan with Erbi...

Kathryn, What you describe about immodium dosage is what I read online. Wish I could find the page again. Thanks for the two hour dosage directions. On that same site I remember reading something about glutamine helping with chemo-induced diarrhea. Anyone tried it? My wife is getting hit pretty hard...

Questran can help as well. It's a cholesteroll-lowering powder you mix with water (or in my wife's case Gatorade), but it has an effect on bile salts that help with diarrhea. On bad days, we're finding two to four immodium, followed by a lomotil, and a Questran chaser seems to do the trick. I did re...

Thanks for these responses. The good news is that I think I figured out the timing on the Marinol to get it to be most effective. Last night my wife had a peach, a whole bunch of grapes, half a bowl of vegetable soup, and an ice cream sandwich (along with a small bowl of cereal earlier in the day). ...

Between restarting Irintican and her pain meds, my wife has completely lost her appetite and is losing weight rapidly. She can't take Megace since she has had blood clots, but the oncologist gave her Marinol (we are not in a Medical Marijuana state). He gave her 5 mgs to take twice a day. The first ...

Congratulations! And, at the risk of sounding selfish, I needed to read something like this today.
S.

It's been a rough few months for my wife, so I haven't posted in a while. Her scan in November showed suspicious activity, but her oncologist at Duke suggested that she wait until after the holidays to rescan and, if necessary, restart chemotherapy. Unfortunately, she continued to have worsening pai...

I'm near Charlote. I would recommend you take the two or three hour dive up to Duke--at least for an initial consult. My wife has an oncologist at Duke who us working with a Presbyterian affiliated local onc.

We really like Yousef Zafar for medical oncology, Trey Blazer for surgery, and Brian Czito for radiation oncology.

Thanks all. This is very helpful. We'll make sure to get some good lotion and soap after my wife's set-up appointment tomorrow.
S.

My wife is getting a daily course of radiation on her shoulder for the next couple of weeks to shrink some lymph nodes that have been pressing on her ulnar nerve (it's not SBRT, which she's had before--I think it's external beam therapy covering a wider area around her brachial plexus). I want to be...

Anyone know when or if a cancerous node becomes a tumor? When the GI doc told me that my wife likely had swollen nodes pressing on her bile duct and that these nodes likely had cancer in them, i asked him this question. But I was a little confused by his response--something about nodes holding the c...

We took my wife to the emergency room Thursday because she was running a fever, her back and shoulder were killing her (we found out last week that she has some mediastinal nodes that might be pressing on a shoulder nerve), and she hasn't been eating or drinking. she's been off chemo since August bu...