What to expect in the final stages of metastasis lung and brain cancer?
March 7th, 2010 | by admin |I am 37 years old. I had breast cancer 4 years ago. Six months ago i found out i have metastasis lung and brain cancer. I had one large tumor removed from my brain. But still have lots of small tumors scattered in my brain they cannot remove. I want to know what i will expect in my final months or weeks. I have short memory loss, slight headaches, nausea and tiredness at the moment. Will i get to the stage of not been able to move, speak, see, hear etc?
Hello, I’m a doctor. Use topamax. I think that you want to get more info about it. Please go to —-> http://webmd39.notlong.com/AANb1SR
2 Responses to “What to expect in the final stages of metastasis lung and brain cancer?”
By shelley_gaudreau2000 on Mar 7, 2010 | Reply
Big hugs and many prayers for you sweet heart. I pray the Good Lord takes the cancer away from you. I can’t answer from personal experience. Only from the point of being a caregiver. And yes you will get weaker and less mobile as time goes on. The site is from my country but the information is very good.
Declining physical capabilities
In the final few weeks of life in progressive serious illness, there is usually a notable decrease in energy and day-to-day functioning. A very significant change is when the person is no longer strong enough to be out of bed. When this is caused by overall weakness from the total disease burden rather than from a specific, possibly fixable problem, it may signal that there are only days to a few weeks to live.
The illness may appear to "speed up", as weakness quickly leads to even further weakness. This decline is often most striking in the last few days of life, when people can change from being fairly independent to sleeping all of the time.
In order to understand why things seems to change so quickly near the end, think of the energy that gets us through the day as being similar to money in the bank. When we are physically well, we can build up our energy savings by eating well, keeping fit, and making other important health and lifestyle choices. When a progressive serious illness occurs, it interferes with the body’s ability to add to the reserves of energy. This is not unlike losing the ability to earn income to add to bank savings.
In such circumstances, we must use existing savings to get through each day. When the body’s energy reserves (savings) are nearly gone, there are dramatic changes in how a person appears. People spend more time sleeping, and less time in activities. When the energy runs out, there seems to be a sudden, big change. The person has no energy to be awake, to communicate, or to take in food or fluids. This change usually signals the final hours or perhaps days of life.
Dramatic changes in physical health
A person’s condition can change quite significantly from one day to the next, or even during the same day. They can seem to go from looking good to looking as though they have only hours to live. This can be perplexing and exhausting for family and friends, who do not know what to prepare themselves for. To understand why these dramatic changes can occur, consider again one of the benefits of having a reserve of something (such as money, or physical strength and energy): it gives something to draw on when there are problems. Without a reserve, things can go from seeming pretty good to seeming very bad quite suddenly, since there is nothing to draw on to buffer or neutralize the drain of energy.
Difficulty recovering from treatment
Treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy can be thought of as making “withdrawals” from the energy reserves of a person. In advanced illness, the body cannot add back to those reserves, and the health care team cannot reliably tell how much “energy savings” someone has left. There is a risk that the treatment would make a withdrawal that exceeds the reserves, in which case the person would become steadily weaker and would not recover from the treatment.
Sudden improvements
Patients whose health seems to be deteriorating can also surprise family and friends with their ability to suddenly improve. This improvement may be an indication that a new problem has resolved itself. For example, a person with a life-threatening illness may have developed a minor viral infection such as a cold or a mild flu. Alternatively, they may have been experiencing a "down day," just as we all do at times, where for no obvious reason there seems to be no energy. For someone who is frail, however, the “down days” can result in a worrisome drop in function, sometimes to be followed by a surprising improvement the next day, when for some reason their energy fluctuates back up. People who are in healthy physical condition have the reserve to draw on to buffer these fluctuations, so the changes do not look so striking.
References :
http://www.virtualhospice.ca/en_US/Main+Site+Navigation/Home/Topics/Topics/Final+Days/When+Death+Is+Near.aspx.
By Adina on Mar 7, 2010 | Reply
Hello, I’m a doctor. Use topamax. I think that you want to get more info about it. Please go to —-> http://webmd39.notlong.com/AANb1SR
References :