Supporting Your Cancer Warrior Part 1

Supporting Your Cancer Warrior Part 1

Hi, I’m Kris Ivie, the husband of Tiffany.  It is more than one person’s journey when cancer is involved. I have put together a series of informational posts from what I learned being a supporter of my wife when she battled her cancer. I would like to pass along some of what I learned.

Part 1: Have a Schedule

If you have a loved one who is battling cancer you will find that things can be very hectic. First of all, planning how someone is going to physically and mentally feel in advance is virtually impossible. Even setting an alarm clock can be a questionable activity. If your loved one has been tossing and turning due to discomfort it is unlikely that they’ll want to be up in 30 minutes when they finally do settle into a manageable sleeping position. For a cancer patient there is no such thing as a set schedule. No one can predict when they’ll get nauseous or have advanced notice of headaches or pain. In the hospital the nursing staff won’t hesitate to wake someone up and make that person take medicine. Nurses keep their schedule and make sure the patients are taking their medications. The cancer patient has enough issues trying to figure out how to deal with their disease so in order to help them through the chaos you need to get organized.

– Medication

Medication schedules and eating schedules are very important when fighting cancer. In order to make sure we didn’t miss or double dose medications in our house we created a check sheet for all of Tiff’s medications. There was a daily schedule to write down when she was given one of her drugs. After her surgeries this was very important to make sure we knew when she could have her next dose of pain medication. It also helped us make sure we didn’t miss her Lovenox shots and there were certain medicines that needed to be taken at different times to minimize interaction or improve absorption. This is especially true of some of the anti-nausea medicines and proton pump inhibitors as they can interfere with the absorption of other drugs. Some of the drugs also need to be taken with food to minimize damage to the digestive system. It is a bad idea to self-administer these drugs because many of them can affect memory. Definitely have some form of documentation to fill out during the day to know when drugs have been taken. Going the extra step and writing down the earliest time for the next dose can help you plan to have a snack or drink ready.

– Food

Food is difficult to plan when there is nausea, pain, and exhaustion. Getting a person who isn’t feeling well to eat can be a monumental task. One of the recommendations from several of Tiff’s doctors was to break food up into smaller snacks as opposed to meals. Instead of 3 meals a day it is better to try to do 6 lighter, snack sized servings. Hydration is also critical and getting Tiff to drink adequate fluids throughout the day was a frustrating ordeal. I was fortunate that my parents and wife get along (maybe even better than they get along with me). My mom was a tremendous help and she would come down during the week so that I could go to work. I know how incredibly tough it was to get Tiff to eat and drink and we eventually found out that some of that was due to drug interactions. I remember at one point my Mom talking to me on the phone and saying, “I just can’t take standing there watching her waste away.” We tried bringing her small snacks and a fresh drink every hour just so she’d have something and more than half the time she didn’t touch either. There were times when we all thought that maybe Tiff had given up. Fortunately for her I am very stubborn. When she started crying I often felt like a villain, but I needed to make sure she got everything she needed packed into the day.

My wife’s recovery was not necessarily typical. The first surgery saw a faulty vacuum unit leading to a wound infection. The infection then required her to be on a wound vacuum pump. When the wound vacuum was removed, only the first few dressing changes were covered by insurance and then I had to learn how to change out the wet/dry dressing. This certainly made her recovery very difficult.