After just five days in the Veterans Home, Marshall has shown great improvement.
He is now eating again and is now able to transfer himself -- without help -- from his bed to his power chair and then from the power chair back to the bed. He still can't really stand up but the physical therapist should start working with him on Monday.
He took himself off of the Dilaudid (pain pill) when he realized it was causing the hallucinations and he has been a different person. Much more alert and more "himself."
Of course, that leaves a hole in the pain relief regimen. They've been giving him the Marinol which helps a lot but not quite enough. The doctor that is assigned to him (Dr. Buchanon) came to see him today and they talked about the different possibilities for pain. They are going to ramp up the morphine from 100mg twice a day to 90mg three times a day and then oxycodone for breakthrough pain.
Then they have to work on the constipation that is caused by the narcotic painkillers.
Some of his family showed up today for a short visit.
So things are going really well. It has now been six weeks since the radiation treatments were done -- and the radiation oncologist had told us that we should start seeing results at six-plus weeks -- so we are hoping there will be some pain relief from the radiation.
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My son, Dustin, was prescribed Marinol for treatment of chronic pain (long before the use of medical marijuana was legalized in Colorado). It worked quite well, but sometimes he had to double (or even triple) the dose. I think it's one of those drugs that can have a dose range...just something to be aware of in case Marshall needs it.
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