Hi all,
im sorry that we all have reason to be here.
My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer with metastisis to the liver in Nov 2019. He has a stoma fitted and had some chemo and radio therapy but decided to stop treatment after some horrendous side effects in July 2020. We were told then that a prognosis of 3 months was optimistic, and here we are almost 17 months later! The last few months he has slowly deteriorated but the past 2-3 weeks have just been awful. He has suffered with swollen legs since the chemo but now they have gotten so bad that he has deep open wounds covering the bottom half of his legs and his feet, they are constantly oozing and have the most awful smell. The district nurses have been coming out twice a week for the last couple of weeks to bandage them up but hes in agony with them, and if anything they seem to be getting worse. the district nurse said she doesn know what it is, has anyone seen or heard of anything like this? Ive tried google but i keep coming up blank!
Hes super confused all the time now, hallucinating, struggling to stay awake (falls asleep mid conversation while stood up which is quite a skill!), he struggles to walk any where, stairs are horrendously hard for him, he eats minimal amounts, he refuses to take to his bed but he is suffering so much, this is so cruel. Hes in pain alot of the time but hes already on over 65 tablets a day plus pain killing patches. And now he has started having night mares to the point that yesterday i got there to find him with bandages falling off his legs, his lounge coffee table missing its legs, sugar poured all over the kitchen, curtains ripped down, furniture moved and messed up (my dad has always been the tidiest person ever!), plus a number of other small totally out of character things, he has no idea what happened but quite vividly remembers the night mare. Oh and somehow he had managed to rip off 3 toe nails just kind of leaving the bottom layer of the nail so no bleeding etc.
I'm desperate now, i guess i just need some words of comfort, i dont want my daddy to die but i cant bear seeing him like this. I am his only carer, he refuses point blank to go into the macmillan unit (he has a phobia of hospitals!), i'm self employed and have 6 children, I have cared for dad every single day since he was dianosed and, as selfish as it sounds, i am exhausted.
WIth Christmas approaching i dont know what to tell my children about Grandad being here for christmas (youngest child is only 6), Grandad has always been with us on christmas day, has anyone seen deterioration like this? So severe yet wont take to bed? He's the strongest man I've ever met, but maybe now that is just making his suffering worse.
Im sorry for the rant, I really am trying to cope alone with this but i really dont know how much more i can cope with.
Thankyou for listening x
