Hi I just wanted to update everyone as people have been so lovely about my brother, who is severely mentally disabled and has stage 2 testicular cancer.
He had his first chemotherapy dose under sedation (needed in orfer to even get him to the hospital) and a general anaesthetic, unfortunately it did not go well at all, the sedation was not enough to calm him enough to get him to go into the hospital, in fact it was so bad the anaesthetist himself had to come out to the carpark and further sedate him before taking straight to theatre in a wheelchair for his general anaesthetic.
Sedationg him took an hour
He then had a blood test to work out his chemo dose (as he cannot even cope with having a blood test while awake)
he was given three lots of anti sickness while under, before having the chemo dose. I was shocked to find out afterwards that the dose he was given was in fact equivalent to what people would normally be given over a seven day period, surely that is a lot for anyone to take in ONE dose?
He was in theatre for more than 3 hours, but the other major problem was it took 4 hours for him to come around after the general anaesthetic, no matter what they tried he would not respond, in the end he had to be given another drug to reverse the anaesthetic and he finally came around.
Sadly but understandly the anaesthetist has said he will not risk any other sedations or general anaesthetics,which I have to agree with him, but this then does mean there wil now be no further attempts at treatment so will only be palliative care from here.
It also means he cannot have any more scans either as he has to be under a general anaesthetic for these too as he will not allow anyone near him and will not keep still, even when sedated.
He lives a long way from me but I am going to see him in the week(did not go to the hospital as it would have made it more stressful for him as there were so many people there already with his carehome carers, nurses, doctors etc.
He is already on morphine and when they examined him they said they could feel his lymph nodes had got even bigger and that he looked more ill than when they saw him in February for his only CT scan, this is all happening way too fast.
