Question about end of life cancer treatment...

[PasadenaTrudy]

I have a friend who lives in Japan and is dying of cancer - - rectal, with mets to liver and stomach. He is now home on palliative care. He is getting IV nutrition and has a feeding tube. He has been too weak to even sit up and write on his computer, he's a writer and is trying to finish a novel before he dies. He wrote on his blog finally, that he's only been getting 400 calories a day via IV. Why would they give him so little? Now they are going to get him back to the hospital to put in a port so he can get in 1,000 calories a day. I've lost many family members to cancer and never heard of such a thing. I think he said something about the doctors not wanting to "feed" the cancer.

This is just upsetting to me. Isn't palliative care all about comfort? Four hundred calories is nothing.

Thanks for reading/listening

[njlib]

1. I work in a long term care facility

and sometimes the body can't tolerate larger amounts of feedings. No matter how much you keep the head of the bed elevated, eventually the fluid becomes too much for the body to handle.

Peace to your friend....

[PasadenaTrudy]

2. I see..

I hadn't thought of it that way. Makes sense. Thanks so much for replying, this puts my mind at ease more. I was wondering if these doctors knew what they were doing. I guess we will see how he handles more calories now.

Thx again!

[mcar]

3. I've worked in hospice

on the administrative side so I am no clinician. However, what I was told was that as the body is going through its final shut down, it can actually be quite detrimental to the patient to push more food into him/her than the body can take. It can also be painful for them.

Hospice care is to keep the patient comfortable. Sometimes feeding a person who is dying doesn't do that.

My best to you and your friend.

[PasadenaTrudy]

6. Thank you!

I know he's not at the final shutting down point yet, he has been going out in the car (not driving himself!) to get some alternative care treatments in another part of Hiroshima. But, yeah, comfort and no pain should be the priority.

[truedelphi]

4. Being linked in to many alt health sites through Facebook, it is appalling to realize that

While CBD oils are healing people, even those now in third and fourth levels of cancer, yet the hospitals remain so very committed to an expensive and often useless modality of treatment.

Also as someone who has worked hospice cases, sometimes the doctor writes out a "prescription" for care, based on what is perceived as the patient's need for the moment. Yet staff will never question the doctor's recommendation, even when the situation that brought about the prescription is past.

I recently travelled from my home to San Jose to help a family out with a friend of mine who was dying from stomach cancer.

Some hospice person had informed the family two months earlier, when B could still talk and express himself, that no one should bug him about his need to eat. That he could suggest to the family when he was hungry. And that if he didn't ask for food, none should be offered.

So on the day I got to his home, B. as starving. He was no longer in the same earlier situation, as he couldn't talk at all any more.

Before it had been bothersome for every other word from family members to be about his need to eat another meal. But once he lost the ability to speak, he could no longer express a desire to eat. I watched his eyes grow big with hunger as I ate my lunch, and then realized the family needed to start in asking him about food again. And soon he was eating three meals a day again.

[PasadenaTrudy]

5. He is doing Vitamin C IV treatments

as a last ditch effort. More his wife's idea. He needs to leave the house 3x a week for this, and he's too weak to get down the stairs. This is Japan, so I don't know the protocol for things over there. I get info. second hand at best right now. Kind of frustrating.
Thanks for taking the time to reply!