[Closed] Can anyone tell me about lung cancer and chemo...

If she doesn't want to know then leave her be! Who are you looking out for here - her or you? Its some folks way of coping

Chemo is less toxic than it used to be and affects everyone differently.

Talk to the doctor (and, no, not me).

Chemo is generally quite personal - so they'll give your mum a dose which they think will do it, and different clinics use different cocktails (of both chemo and anti-emetic drugs).

Some chemo targets only the cancerous cells too so there are fewer side effects.

Too many variables I'm afraid to give you a solid answer.

Good luck to your mum 🙂

If she doesn't want to know then leave her be! Who are you looking out for here - her or you? Its some folks way of coping

To be fair to TJ - some patients don't want to know side effects of drugs - especially chemo.

It has such a poor reputation (not always deserved) that people would rather not know that it might make them sick, hair fall out, teeth fall out etc.

But I guess it doesn't hurt for you to know - so you can keep an eye out for her.

I'd phone the clinic and ask to speak to the oncologist.

Precisely DrR - I want to be able to understand for myself and so I can be ready to support her. She went through hell in January because she had wildly different expectations of the operation/convalescence time than the reality and I want to understand what she might expect this time around - she is fiercely independent and doesn't want to be seen to be expecting help, but at the same time that doesn't mean we don't care for her and want to look out for her.

I think it varies a lot according to the type of chemo and the person having it. My dad was on chemo for two years before he started needing to take anti-sickness medication, and it didn't make his hair fall out. It did knacker his immune system though, and in the end that was what got him. 🙁

Yes she has been told to steer clear of busy places (not easy when she likes taking the bus) to keep risk of infection down.

So it seems we'll just have to wait and see - fingers crossed she won't have the sickness or lose her hair (the thing she is most concerned about).

i know a lady that lost her (Grey) hair to it mf and when it came back it came back in full color 🙂
just a little anecdote you can throw in if it comes to that.
all the best.

🙂 My mum might quite like that 🙂

Yeah my mate had grey hair and lost it and his came back fully and black like it was years before 😉

My dad had 2 courses of chemo for his lung cancer and was really good on it. He only lost a bit of his hair (what he had anyway).
The unfortunate bit for him is there was no cure for his cancer 🙁 he is now in a hospice, the deterioration is crazy less than 12 months ago he was helping flag my patio!!!
Sorry to go off on a depressing ramble.
Hope everything goes ok or her 🙂

You know TJ you really are one of the most crass and bombastic people.
Someone has a family member with a serious medical issue and wants to know more about it, for there own benefit (show me in the OP's post where he says he is going to discuss any of the info gleaned with his mother) and you go for the kill, wha an insesitive cock!!

For MF a good friend of mine is currently undergoing a course of a new form of chemo(for breast cancer that has spread) she is currently on course 6 of an 18 treatment course (will not end until the end of this year) so far she has been feeling pretty good, had a bad cold just after cycle 5 as the chemo does attack your immune system, and she has odd days where she is tired usually pretty soon after treatment.

If you and or your mother have never read it Lance Armstrong's book (yes I know loads on here h8 him) its not about the bike is very inspiring and deals in alot of detail with his cancer treatment .

Hope all goes well for you, and remember successful treatments are far more common now so its def worth fighting!!

TJ you're well out of order. Wind your neck in.

It's impossible to say what the reaction will be to chemo, but it's administered on a constant feedback cycle ie they check how you're doing and then give it the max.

Unfortunately been there and done that myself. Alive and Kicking still... obviously.

funnily enough tj is right but his way of putting it is somewhat blunt. chemo affects everyone differently as the doses vary from person to person and everyone is different.
having spent the last two years fighting a lymphoma i've had a little experience of the ups and downs.
mf you need to talk to your mum and ask if she minds you finding out and if once you have found out whether she wants to know what you found.
I NEVER went on google to find out about my diagnosis nor my treatments, my wife did but she kept her findings to herself. for me it helped experiencing everything for myself and not waiting for something to happen because someone else had it.
i blogged [url= http://thediaryofafurball.blogspot.com/ ]here[/url] and it was an immense help.
be honest with your mum and ask her to be honest with you, it's the only thing that keeps you sane. good luck.
nick

Sorry,but TJ is absolutely right,it's her cancer,and she will deal with it.yes you need to support her,yes you need information,but it's up to her what she does with this.
Ian

TJ is absolutely bang on with what he is saying, it's just that he put it very bluntly.

TJ, you really are a prick of the highest order. He asked because [b]he[/b] wants to understand what his mother's going through. Your bedside manner must be amazing. I'm guessing most of the patients on your ward are unplugging their own life support machines when they see you starting your shift...

I do apologise if I was too blunt. Its all a bit raw having recently lost a very good friend to inoperable lung cancer.

My friend also did not want to know what was happening - it was her way of coping. You have to respect this. I found that very difficult to cope with.

Have you happy guys overlooked this?

"So - when is it 'normal' to start feeling sick with the drugs? I am worried she is now thinking it will be easier than it may be and want to understand as much as I can so I can help her manage her expectations."

Sorry Tj - those overlapped

Trying to help elderly parents can be incredibly frustrating. After all, they've lived longer and probbly bin through more than you have, so in their eyes at least, who are you to tell them what's 'best'? I know my mum woon't want me trying to do so, and her mum certainly din't, even though my mum's a nurse and probbly did know what was 'best'. Older people get, the less independant they feel, and 'fussing' over them an just make this even worse. As difficult as it must be, you really do need to take a step back sometimes, for their sake. Let them feel they at least have some degree of control over their own lives left. Imagine yourself in their shoes; would you want someone fussing over you all the time? Would you want to know the whole truth about something that must be absolutely terrifying?

TJ's advice is right, if a little brusque. BoringBob; I'd reckon he might know a tad more about patient care than you do. Your comments are proper out of order.

TBH I think your mother may feel that she is trying to protect you from the cancer,and is trying to be as positive as possible.If you need information ask to see the consultant or specialist nurse,but no-one in the team will make your mother have information she doesn't want.
Ian
P.S. I think I'd quite like TJ to be my nurse,he'd tell me what I wanted to know,not what somebody else thought I should know

guys - this not about me please.

I made my comments and apologised for upset.

To get the thread back on track, some people feel very little in the way of side effects from the chemo that is given for lung cancer. Some will get nauseous, some will have their hair thin but not lose it, some will develop piles, lose finger nails etc, most will be wondering when the bad side effects that they've heard of will kick in. Having been through this with my dad, I can tell you that I wanted to know absolutely everything that was going on for my own sanity and just to know that they were doing everything they possibly could. Nothing wrong with that, but you need to respect your mothers wishes as difficult as that may be.

sorry TJ,didn't mean to involve you personally,but the patient is the centre of care,and we deal with relative's stress as it occurs.When I started as a nurse we were often asked " Don't tell him/her they've got cancer",and people agreed,so we lied to extremely ill people,who were not stupid,about their prognosis,now if they ask we tell them the truth. They seem happier with that.
Ian

OK TJ

I seem to recall you do you work in the healthcare sector? So back to:

"So - when is it 'normal' to start feeling sick with the drugs? I am worried she is now thinking it will be easier than it may be and want to understand as much as I can so I can help her manage her expectations."

I can only give my own experiences, not answer the Q above.

MF, similar situation with my Mum.
She's had 2 lots of chemo for lymphoma, 3rd one soon. She also does not want to research the disease or the treatment.
She has not gone out of the house (other than to hospital) since she was diagnosed (6 weeks ago) initially she was very ill and now due to risk of infection due to the treatment. They have even rehomed their parrot.
She has had no hair loss yet although has been advised to shave her head once it does start to fall out. Stops it falling into your food etc.
Good luck to you and your Mum.

As I and others have said. There is no norm. We do not know what chemo regime she is going to be on nor how she will react.

Side effects are not nearly as bad as they used to be. Each individual will react differently.

Not lung cancer, elsewhere, but the Missus has recently been through big surgery followed by pretty intensive Chemo and then by radiotherapy.
It doesn’t make me an expert. They are at the hospital but I can tell you that you won’t know what the reactions are going to be until you encounter them and I’m sorry that doesn’t help.
The problems are multiple, psychological and physiological. For ‘er indoors there was the repeated climb out of the treatment pit thinking it was over only to be knocked back down for some more abuse. Physically it wasn't treatment-related issues that were the problem. You know you have to deal with them and she was happy to do that in a ‘bring it on’ sort of way. It was other little annoyances. These will be different for everybody. The worst side effects for her came after 3-4 weeks in - her feet and legs swelled, she lost all her energy (walking 20 yds was about it for the day) hair all over the pillow (but not all of it and not knowing when/if it was going to stop) and that’s not even the start of it. Immune systems get shot to pieces so Dengue fever in the middle of it all wasn’t very funny, especially as it stopped the chemo treatment for a time. She blew straight past all of that. Her problem was the impossibility of getting leak-proof dressings on the pressure sores she picked up after surgery (Yes, I know it shouldn’t happen). So, it won’t be like that for your Mum. She will tell her own story in a few months and I look forward to hearing it.
I understand completely where you are. We asked the same questions and failed to get answers too. Once into the treatment none of those questions seemed to matter. The Missus just says ‘you deal with it because there really isn't an alternative’. At the end she just picked up her life again like nothing had happened giggling happy to have lost 35lbs but not prepared to recommend it as a weight-loss programme. She’s into the 3 monthly CT scan checks now, with all the nail-biting that involves and so far so good. But that my Missus, and she is very definitely a one-off. Your Mum will be different. It’s a b****r that there’s nothing you can do to help. Just be there and regard it as a good thing – the solution to a bigger problem!

Again +1 for TJ,my mum had resection of jaw,followed by Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy,she was never sick.She will let you know what she needs,she's got cancer,not you.
Ian

Can concur with the statement that it affects different people differently. Sadly for me, my mum (who had chemo and radio therapy to treat her brain tumour) didn't take well to it at all. It made her very ill, she lost almost all of her hair, and the drugs gave her an immense appetite and she gained about 5 stone!

The good news though is that my mum was not typical, and most people that have the treatment don't react as badly as she did.

Either way, it's not a nice thing to have to go through, so MF my thoughts go out to your mum and you. Good luck to the both of you!

know a lady that lost her (Grey) hair to it mf and when it came back it came back in full color

My cousins hair came back completely grey (wasn't before)and then after a few more months went back to it's usual colour. On his wedding day it looked like he'd had grey highlights

My mother is currently on chemo for bowel cancer, with secondaries in the liver and lungs. We're lucky in that she's realised that we want to know what's going on and help if we can, but she and my father seriously considered not telling us when they found out. My brother and I are both mid-30's, but my parents just didn't want to tell us in case we couldn't cope. As it is, they seem to have been totally honest with us, and are taking note of our questions and suggestions (such as "Ask for results of the tests if they don't give them to you automatically") She's pretty inquisitive, and wants to know what things mean, so when she got her blood test results, she sent them to me and asked me to find out what they might mean... However, we have had to accept that she wants to deal with this in her own way, which means we sometimes have to stay out of the way and not be as involved as we'd like to be.

As far as the chemo effects are concerned, she had one bad phase right at the beginning when the hospital were trying to get the medications right, but most of the time you wouldn't know there was anything wrong. The worst bit seems to be just after she's had the initial dose of each 2-week course, when she goes a bit hyper and generally hard-to-live-with (according to my dad, everything has to be done "now" and "now" is 5 minutes ago...). Other than that, she hasn't lost much hair at all and the first 3-month course seems to have had pretty good results; the scan last week showed that the spots on her lungs seem to be inactive, and the liver tumour has reduced by 40%, according to my dad.

I can understand if your mother doesn't want to know things; my mother has had to come to terms with the fact that her life expectancy is now less than 5 years; we've already had more than the 3 months which was the original minimum estimate, and I'm not sure I could have coped with that the way my mother has.

MF. You asked when the side effects start. Not sure if it's the same but I had ABVD chemo. The one aspect that seemed to be similar with each cycle and for the other patients i spoke to was that the effects started 3 of 4 days after infusion. As mentioned by others, the side effects vary from person to person. In my case they were also different with each cycle but the main theme was extreme tiredness and constant nausea. The strange thing is that you are so pumped full of steroids that you eat like a horse even when you feel like puking!. You can get lots of other weird minor side-effects. e.g my sense of taste went haywire. Water tasted vile so I could only drink orange-squash which I don't normally like. It helps to be adaptable around this sort of thing.

MF, do you know which drug(s) they're using for the chemo? Christie's have a set of Info Sheets specifically for each drug/combination
[url= http://www.christie.nhs.uk/patients/booklets/chemo_index.aspx ]Chemo at The Christie[/url]

Unfortunately, I'm about to embark on this same journey of supporting my mother through chemotherapy

MF, not lungs but my MIL recently came through a brain tumour and coped well with the chemo and radiotherapy. Her hair remained remarkably intact apart from the area of her head where they operated but it's been about 18 minus since they removed the tumour and her hair has grown back well. Aside from the effects of major brain surgery she wasn't too bad. She lost her hearing temporarily but it has returned which I believe was a result of the radiotherapy and probably because if where it was targeted. The chemo didn't affect her too badly apart from a few days when she was sick.

Overall though, despite a brain haemorrhage, then 6 months later discovering she had a brain tumour, her recovery has been remarkable and despite a grade IV tumour, she has now been given the all clear.

All the best to you and your mother.

Just coming back to this now (I couldn't bear trying to respond using my phone).

Anyhoos - thanks for all the advice - it seems mum won't really know what to expect when and if she starts to get any side-effects if the above experiences are anything to go by.

And to put the record straight - I was never trying to find out what she could expect so I could go tell her things she didn't really want to know - I appreciate completely that she has decided to manage this in her way (I wouldn't expect her to do anything else). I was only ever trying to understand it so I could be more able to help her through things if she subsequently struggles with anything in the same way she did after the operation.