Sunday, March 27, 2011

I'm here at UCSF with dad and Kimmie and Candy and Becky of course. 

I spoke with Dr. Kemp who said that he and Dr. Martin don't think that the 60 day treatment is an option for him. The benefits don't justify the length and toxicity of the treatment and he would just end up in this place again but will have spent 2 months in the hospital when he could have been at home.

They do want to do a short term chemo treatment that will take 2 days and he'll be here for about a week to recuperate. They are hoping that the treatment will drop the amount of leukemia in his bone marrow and ease his pain. If it works, he can continue to do this treatment every 10 days. He also could possibly do this at Feather River. 

If the treatment doesn't work, they said he has several different options for Hospice. He can either be at home with family members taking care of him with a nurse coming in a couple of hours a day and on-call, or he could go into a facility that deals with hospice patients, or he could stay here at UCSF in a "Comfort Suite" where they would keep him comfortable until he passes. The home hospice is his obvious choice, but the problem with that is that he cannot have IV painkillers at home, only oral. Those have not seemed to help his level of pain, and he requires quite high doses of IV Dilaudid.

We'll have to wait to see how he fares this week before we pick up again on that conversation.

He is a bit more alert today but still says VERY random things, can't quite follow a conversation, and gets really confused. He is a lot more stable on his feet and can move around by himself quite well. He has a nurse who sits in his room or outside the door 24/7 since he is so confused and is still a fall risk.