I'm so sorry to hear about your mother, My mother also has stage 4 pancreatic cancer that has spread to her liver, she was dx on Feb 24, 2009. She is taking Gemzar Chemo once a week for 3 weeks and off a week, She takes tarceva (Chemo) pill every morning. It was to late with it being stage 4 to do any type of surgery. I'm located in Houston, Texas.
MD Anderson has a wedsite that you could go to to check out information. We as a family decided to treat my mother close to home at a cancer center by her house, our doctors are affliated with MD Anderson and use the same treatment on her without having to drive across town, I don't think my mother could of handle being in the car for the hour drive,she said that she would have already quit treatment if she would of had to make that drive.
This is a fast spreading cancer and time is not on your side.
The cancer treatment they are giving my mother is helping srink the tumors, and prolong her life, the treatment has helped with the pain.
They did give her morphine and she did have to use it for the 1st month, becareful with the morphine, When things get bad now my mother will take a vicodin, but until they can shrink the tumors some, please keep her comfortable, no one gets an award for not taking thier pain medicine. And she won't get hooked on the drugs, you can't get hooked on something you need.
They gave my mother 6 months to live, we are on month 7, it has not been an easy road for her or us, losing your mother and seeing her struggle to fight to live is one of the hardest things...The best advise is when she starts some sort of treatment,make sure she drinks plenty of water, I'm talking 6 to 8 bottles everyday, this keeps things moving, once she stops drinking or eating and just wanting to sleep all the time the body will shut down. My mother crys about all the water she has to drink, the treatment makes her feel full, but she has to do this!
As of last week we are doing IV Fluids everyday 1000cc, just to keep enough fluids in her, her kidney blood numbers are high and that means blood is spilling over into the kidneys, which means she could go into Kidney failure, so we are hoping this will help and when she has that much fluids everyday she only has to drink 3 bottles of water, now do you understand what I mean about making her drink water...You don't only have to worry about the cancer you have to worry about the other organs also in the body failing.
Hair loss- If the treatment she gets on makes her hair fall out, she might experiece her head hurting to ease this pain cut her hair real short and this will help, my mothers head hurt really bad and it scared me, I was thinking the cancer had spread to her head, but what it was is when the hair dies it causes the head to have knots and hurts them, this will happen when the hair starts to fall out, I just cut my mothers hair really short and that helped her, no doctor told us this information.
The path that you are on will forever change your life, No one can take the place of our mothers, My mother is 67 and a young 67 at that.
Your mother will be tried all the time, take her for walks to keep the bowels moving, because the pain medicine will stop her up, so remember water, walking are good for her, even if you are walking real slow, just as long as you have her up and moving around...
I don't know all the answers, I only know what we are doing for my mother and what our path has been like for the last 7 months.
Oh my mom has lost 50 pounds in 7 months.
Keep us posted on your mother, and God be with us all!