A close friend was diagnosed as stage 4 colon cancer about 7 months ago at 48 years old. She had one mass at the time that was surgically removed and she had a colostomy. She then underwent 6 months of chemotherapy finishing only recently. Several weeks prior to the last chemo treatment she began experiencing the same abdominal pain than she did prior to surgery and since then it has been discovered that there are two new masses that grew during chemotherapy. Why they were not discovered before now we do not know. It does not appear any scans were done after chemo commenced until she complained of pain. She was admitted to the hospital six days ago allegedly for pain management. The doctor also told her at that time about a surgical option called "de-gutting" and/or doing another round of chemo. However, he also told her that the chemo she had was the best there was to be had thereby not giving alot of hope to the thought of more chemo. She was told she had two weeks to two months to live.
Currently, she is in incredible pain in the hospital and is on a morphine drip and also a pain patch. She is very bloated and doesn't know why. She is afraid to go to sleep. She has been told that the bloating could be constipation from the morphine so she feels that she is in a catch 22 in that she eats then has pain so she hits the morphine pump for the pain and the morphine is allegeldy creating constipation which causes more pain. So, it's a vicious circle. Forgot to mention that she is on stool softeners but no luck as of yet. Today is the worst day we've all seen her. She is not herself and is all over the map emotionally which could be the result of the disease, the drugs, the pain, the emotional toll of the situation or a combination of all of these things. Her son, an adult, has chosen to bury his head in the sand and is nowhere to be found. He has not come to see his mother. Her sister is of no assistance. Her doctor has not been by to see her. Only on call doctors from his practice come by but she says that they give her no answers and she feels it is because she is not their patient. Yet she cannot get her doctor to show up at the hospital. All she has are her friends and we are all worried because something needs to be done but we don't know what to do. She wants to get another opinion and we want to see her get competent care. Rather than to be stuck on the cancer floor of a hospital in a small area with few cancer doctors to begin with and then to have her doctor not even show, we would like to assist her in getting to a cancer treatment center and tshe wants to go. She wants to go to Moffitt in Tampa and we want to get her there but don't know how to go about it. She thinks she needs to talk to her doctor first but how do you do that if he won't come to the hospital. Also, there is no way she can do this alone. She is in so much pain it is affecting her ability to do anything else.
What can we do to get her some immediate help and get her moved? There may actually be no hope left at this point but she and we want to hear that from a cancer professional not the guy who may have screwed up her care here by failing to scan all the while and who doesn't care enough to get to the hospital for his patient.