If your ill spouse/family member has fatgue all the time try talking to their specialist about what else can be done. My husband has Stage 4 terminal metastized cancer (almost 6 years ago had 2/3 of lung removed, and a year and a half ago spread to lining outside the lung). He has chemo every 3 weeks indefinitely (no cure) and had continual fatgue to the point he was laying down most of the day with no energy what so ever.
The Oncologist suggested Gensing which he had a bad reaction to (made him feel sick). So two months ago he prescribed Retalin (one in the morning), and his fatigue/tiredness is much better. He still gets knocked out for a week after the chemo, but the other two weeks he's not living in bed all the time. It does help some.
Hi Karen,
My wife has been on ritalin for some time and the dosage has had to be gradually increased as it's effectiveness has waned. I don't know if it is that she adjusts to it, her cancer is causing increasingly more pain, or the chmoe and all the other stuff is causing even more fatigue. In any case, it generally doesn't do much for her anymore. I wish they would find her something else. If she had the energy to get up and move around some, it would help many of her other issues.
Hi Smedley,
What is your wife's diagnoses? I don't think I read details on her. How are you holding up?
Hi Karen.
I inadvertently answered this elsewhere as you noted, but I'll do so again for the thread's sake. :)
She has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. It has moved into her bones, a few lymph nodes, andher cranial/spinal fluid (CSF). Nothing in any other organs or other soft tissue...yet.
During that time she has had several surgical procedures including have disc fragments removed from her back that they believe broke loose after being weakend by cancer.
While in the hospital she picked up MRSA and we nearly lost her to that a couple of times. We are still fighting some small remnants of that and it has been over a year.
The CSF got cleared up and, amazingly, has not returned. The docs talk about that at conferences and can't explain it. That should have returned and she should have been gone before her last birthday and here she just had another.
Quite honestly, no one really knows how she has managed to make it through all this and is still here in as relatively good shape as she is. That is not to say there aren't many issues, as my other posts indicate, but she's in pretty good shape for the shape she's in.
She is on something like her 6th or 7th (maybe more?) flavor of chemo and she's had 3 or 4 rounds of radiation. The chemo is continuous but it has to be changed as her cancer adapts to it. It was almost completely gone form her body twice, then it adapted and came roaring back even stronger. So any sign of adaptation adn we change course and hit it from another direction.
How am I holding up? I'm haning in there. Day by day, somtimes minute by minute. That's all we can do, I suppose.
Here's hoping you have a good day today.