Chemo?

[trlcavscout]

So my mom was diagnosed with small cell lung and lymph node(spell check) cancer last week. She goes in tomorrow to have some gizmo put in so she can start chemo next monday. I dont have any first hand experience with this so my first question is will she be able to drive herself to and from chemo? I didnt think so but I am no doctor. She lives in Cheyenne and her husband is an over the road truck driver who cant quite his job for a local one because they need the insurance. She has been driving down here to the fort to take care of my grandpa (her dad) who also has lung cancer so I am gonna be picking up slack their also. But only haveing one car and my wife working the days I am off is gonna be rough if I am driving to cheyenne all the time to. I guess 60 + years of smoking caught up to him like 35 years of it did her. But after storming the beach and 60 + years of smoking and drinking grandpa is doing pretty good for his age!

[theGinsue]

Dude, I terribly sorry to hear all of this.

I don't have first hand experience or even immediate second hand experience dealing with chemo, but from what I understand the treatments are ROUGH and your mom will probably be in absolutely no condition to drive herself (in fact, I'd be surprised if the hospital would discharge her [even for outpatient care] without someone there to drive her home).

[Irving]

I think my mom had to drive her best friend to a lot of her treatments. I'll ask her tomorrow for you.

[Jmetz]

Check out (or have your mom check out) The Gerson Therapy. My brother was told he would have to be on 2 medications for the rest of his life and had been taking them for years. He has been doing a mild approach to this for a month and has been off the meds for 2 weeks.

[Geardo]

Chemo drains people of all energy, in short she will not be able to drive to and from solo. Sorry to hear the news, i know all to well how it is to have parents with cancer. Thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.

[djjames]

Tough news man. She's definitely going to need a driver. Having worked in healthcare for a long time I've seen this way too much.

1. Plan on 2 days of rest. Day of and day after.
2. Plan on someone (if you can't do it) being able to help her with day to day stuff for the same amount of time.
3. Also, if she hasn't done it yet...make a list of all her medications with frequency, dose, name (you'd be surprised..."it's that blue pill"), and why she takes it

Is she having a port placed? Also, depending on how far something like this has progressed is how they'll treat it. Chemo runs in cycles. 1 week on, 3 weeks off....for example.

****KEEP BILLING STATEMENTS FROM INSURANCE, AND ALWAYS TRY TO GET COPIES OF VISITS, PROCEDURES, ETC****

Good luck

[funkfool]

Hang in there... my pa went though it for 7 years... ureter/stomach.

[Bailey Guns]

Wow...sorry to hear about all that. Best wishes to your mom and family.

[SA Friday]

My wife went through four months of cyclophosphimide (nitrogen mustard, the basic chemo) treatmwnts to suppress her lupus. Hers was once a month, and most of the cancer patients were on a much more aggressive schedule than that.

She will be in no condition to drive home. The anti nausia medication they use right before chemo is super strong and made my wife loopie after about an hour or two. My wife couldn't take pills either from infusion to about day three. She puked immediatly. Suppositories took almost 4 hours sometimes 6 to kick in. I ended up getting trained and giving her inner-muscular shots of phenagren every 8 hours for two to three days after the treatments.

Everyone is different during chemo treatment, but you can pretty much bet on her not being in any condition to drive after treatments for at the very least two days. You might be better off planning for her to stay with you or someone else at least during treatments and a couple of days after.

[Glock Shooter]

PM sent. Keep the faith, she'll get through this.