Dear Sue, Your friend needs an assisted care fascility. If he intends to live alone then he should have blood preasure meds and pain meds on hand. To be honest, your friend would probably benefit from marijuana. Not the drug store junk, the real stuff. It will help a lot with keeping food down and some people even get an appetite. If you could get him to see a physiatrist before surgery, that would be the person that would be most helpfull at heading off stupid things that may happen. I had a friend with colon cancer that was a quad but he went downhill after surgery so fast I don't think anything would have helped him.
Best Wishes, john ----- Original Message ---- From: Sue Worthington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 3:42:53 PM Subject: [QUAD-L] Complications of SCI when getting chemotherapy Does anyone have experience with undergoing chemotherapy and the complications that are more likely because of SCI? I have a very dear friend in Ohio, USA who has had a C6 quadriplegia for 37 years, is now 53 years old and got bladder cancer. His bladder was removed, he was in hospital for 4 months with complications directly related to his SCI (blood pressure, med mix ups, 5 intubations, temperature disregulation--to name a few). The possibility of these complications were not discussed nor planned for before the surgery even though they are known risks for quadriplegia. Now he is to start chemo and AGAIN there has been no discussion of complications that are more likely to occur or impact him differently because he is quadriplegic, such as aspiration from vomiting, heightened infection risk (his white blood counts are already low), etc. We want to anticipate and ensure he has support this time around for his special needs but have trouble getting info, statistics etc that will help him advocate for things like home health care and better monitoring, and additional professional help (like a hematologist?), etc. This is to be done outpatient and he lives alone . Do people have experiences and resources they can share? I am a medical person and having difficulty finding any info on this, even anecdotal! Thanks ____________________________________________________________________________________ Moody friends. Drama queens. Your life? Nope! - their life, your story. Play Sims Stories at Yahoo! Games. http://sims.yahoo.com/
