Hello everybody!
This is a long one, but could be helpful for some people in the same situation as Marie.
I must share with all of you, what transpired with Marie over the past couple of weeks, but first a quick one liner of what symptoms Marie has been experiencing since this past April up until 2 weeks ago. Marie was experiencing severa nausea with abdominal pain and discomfort on a daily basis. That started when she was treated with radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, bone strenghtning therapy and long acting / short acting opiates for bone cancer pain. All of these treatments were started within one week of each other.
Marie up to two weeks ago was confined to her lift chair , bed, had no energy, no appetite, was loosing weight every week, her will to live in this state was dwindling rapidly, despite her trying to remain positive.
Generally everyday Marie would start getting nauseated mid morning or around noonish. Five weeks ago she was placed on Effexor for depression. Lunch time was when she elected to take that medication. So we moved her vitamin B100 supplements which she was taking with her noon pills to her morning pills. Over the next 3 weeks she was now nauseated more so in the morning and it would last most of the day. We discussed this with our health care group, medical oncologist, VON, palliative care nurses and no one could point a finger in the right direction, at one point I was told we only treat symptoms.
In the back of my mind there was a flag waiving and it was telling me all along, when Marie started all of these treatments she had bone pain to a fractured rib and her hip nothing else.
Two weeks ago, I was praying to god to guide us in the right direction. The next morning when I woke up, I was preparing Marie's med's and supplements for the day and an intuition jumped at me I looked up the side effects for vitamin B100 a vitamin that she had been taking before she got diagnosed, and one of the side efects was nausea. So Marie did not take it and she had the best day ever, no nausea, nothing, she was up all day which was awesome. We also stopped vitamin E which also list nausea as a side effect. That same afternoon we were talking to our palliative care nurse and she recommended to stop taking the multivitamin as well because some peolple have GI isssues with it. The next morning Marie took her first medication of the morning which was Rabeprazole 40mg (Rx for ulcers,GERD etc), this medication had been doubled to that level a week or so before, because of all the GI symptoms. Within 20 minutes of Marie taking it she was extremelly nauseated, and that lasted for the whole morning. The next day Marie didn't take rabeprazole and she had a little bit of nausea which was controlled with Stemetil , that same same day we discussed all this with our family doctor and he agreed with us.
Marie has been nausea free since then, she now goes out for a short walk everyday, she has an appetite she eat's well, she has a little more energy everyday. Marie is now bone pain free and and nausea free, her spirits are lifting up along with her will to live. She now takes rabeprozole 20 mg at bedtime if she needs it, and we make sure that all of the supplements she stopped taking are well replenished in her diet.
The overall picture is that Marie's vitamin supplements and stomach acid reduction medication were amplifying the opiate pain meds nausea symptoms. We disclosed all of the supplements and daily Rx that Marie was taking on a daily basis, with all the doctors, nurses etc, before she was treated in April.
Our lessons learned here was to keep being pro-active in Marie's care , and of course to share with the world what hardships and successes she experienced over the past 5 months. This message is is intended to highlight was transpired and not intented to offend anyone in the medical profession, on the contrary, we have a lot of faith in our medical system and all of the medical staff that look's ater Marie's care. Hopefully this information will help others.