My dad has stage IV NSCLC with a brain met and eye met. He was given Tarceva 150mg in April. He stopped taking it after a while for about a week because he couldn't eat anything and wanted to throw up all the time. Then the doctor told him to start it again which he did, but has now stopped taking it again because of these sideaffects and since he has lost about 6kg in the last 2months(20since diagnosed), he asked his doctor to give him a different treatment. He wants chemo again, which may be psycological because he might feel safer if he has to go to hospital every two weeks.
What I would like to know is whether anyone knows of any Tarceva alternative,or has been through the same thing. A few people on this site had suggested the last time I wrote about this, lowering the Tarceva dose.
Also, the thing is that my father doesn't know about his eye met, it would totally bring him down and doesn't know what the doctors say. It's the only way he can keep fighting.But he can't see from his eye anymore, which is very sore, and has had terrible arm pains for a month now. The doctors said it's neuritis and have given him numerous painkillers which don't work(oxxalgan, rheumasid, depon max, mesulid, arm patches). He can't even sleep most nights... The sad thing is that one of his two doctors, shows that he is fed up with my dad calling him every now and again; he tells us that we have to understand that my dad has done well up to now, but he's coming to the end now.! My dad phoned him today again asking him if there was anything more he could take for his pain and he said that he has done what he could, there's nothing else, to phone the other doctor and put the phone down because he was busy.( We are in a public hospital, as there aren't any private hospitals on our island)
Do doctors stop trying for their patients after a certain stage because they think there's no point? Times like this i wish i had studied medicine. Perhaps then my dad would't have been wrongly diagnosed 6months before they found the cancer,, wouldn't have had mets, would be OK now.
Sorry about going on and on, and thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read this.
Margarita