My dads girlfriend was recently diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy and no lymphnodes are involved. She is due to start treatment next week.
There is one thing I am confused about and was looking for a little insight on it. They have her taking 16mg/day for 2 days of dexamethasone to help with nausea?!?!?! Combined with some other things. They have written her a script for kytril (sp?) to be used as necessary if experiencing nausea as well. I don't understand why dexamethasone is being used for nausea. My dad is fighting brain cancer right now as well and he uses dexamethasone but to reduce brain swelling and with a stage 4 GBM has never been on 16 mg per day. I know how ugly this drug can be and I don't understand why they are using it in treatment of breast cancer. I also don't understand how they can flood her body with such a high dose and then just stop it after 2 days. I thought it needed to be tapered down (I guess she isn't on it long enough for tapering?!?!?)
Any information on this would be greatly appreciated from anyone who has experience with decadron (dexamethasone)
Struggling