Nausea, dizziness, tiredness, loss of apetite: the side effects of my dad’s interferon have finally kicked in with a vengeance. Or rather, we hope they have. It’s unfortunate that the side effects of the treatment look so similar to the symptoms of the disease. To make matters worse, he has the cold that the rest of the family all seem to have had over the last month or so. Together, all of this has left him in a pretty miserable condition. He hasn’t been strong enough to have a shower in four days, he’s barely eaten anything, and it’s a struggle even to get out of bed.
It’s really hard to know how well the treatment is going, but in a few days we should have a clearer picture. Last week, he had the cranial MRI scan to gauge the effectiveness of the stereotactic radiosurgery he had three months ago. On Thursday this week, he had a whole-body radioisotope bone scan to check on the tumour in his back and to see if there’s anything visible in his ankle (he has pain there but an x-ray showed nothing unusual). On Tuesday, he has a whole body CT scan to check on the tumour in his leg and to make sure there are no new metastases. We get to talk to the oncologist then too. It’ll be a relief to actually know how things are progressing. (I’m quite confident they’re going well - until a week or two ago he was feeling so well he was considering going back to work part-time - but the last few days have shaken this confidence a little.)
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