Hi,
Well, Dad is still in hospital…nearly 7 weeks now! His back pain is not better unfortunately.
I managed to see his consultant a few weeks ago and he explained a bit more about what was happening with the cancer. Seems he had a light chain protein score of well over 14,000 when treatment started which, according to the consultant, is an extremely high figure. I have since found out that patients with a score that high usually present with total kidney failure so thank goodness Dad has managed to avoid that! Consultant is convinced that treating the cancer will reduce his pain levels.
The initial CTD treatment reduced the protein values to about 6,000 but then went back up over 10,000 again so a couple of weeks ago they moved him on to a PAD regime. Latest blood test shows his protein count down to around 1,500 which is encouraging! Lets hope it continues to drop this time.
Biggest issues is still the pain though. He is on about 250mg/day of slow acting morphine plus oromorph topups but every attempt to get him up over the past few weeks has resulted in him nearly passing out with the pain. He has seen a bone specialist, various pain specialists and various physios and there has been no change in approach to his treatment for the pain although they are getting pretty insistent that he has to get up, probably because the longer he is flat out the more likely he is to suffer other complications.
However, over the past couple of days he has managed to sit on the edge of the bed for 30 seconds to a minute and even shuffle a few steps using a zimmer. Pain is excruciating mind you but he is desperate to get out of hospital so I think he’s willing to try anything right now. Interestingly he has done this without the back brace. I think that contraption has been something of a red herring in all this as by the time he has gone through the pain of getting into it, he has nothing left to give to the actual attempt to stand.
So, the battle continues…
daftmule.
