The start of Deb's second week of radiotherapy. She has declined markedly over the last few weeks. In particular she has muscle weakness. This is more pronounced on her left side and in her upper legs. She has great difficulty getting up and down stairs, (after the escalator incident I get very worried about her falling), can not get out of the chair unaided, struggles getting in and out of bed and whenever sitting slumps to her left hand side. I do not think the decline is due to the radiotherapy but rather the tumour progression affecting the brain. (The tumour is in the RHS frontal lobe - the RHS of the brain controls the LHS of the body). Her cognitive function is also more impaired. (Deb doesn't know what day of the week it is, cannot do simple sums etc).
During the week, after discussion with Fred Berki, Deb's steroid dose was increased from 4 to 8 mg per day. This made her brighter and more alert but did little to improve her muscle weakness.
Today we struggled into RT, we took the wheelchair but in the end Deb thought she could walk with just the use of her stick and afterwards saw Dr Sanghera and Claire. This was the first time Dr Sanghera had seen Deb since her escalator fall and he was concerned to discover why that had happened. We discussed Deb's condition. Dr Sanghera said that one of the effects of increasing the steroid dose could be muscle weakness and suggested we slowly reduced the dose back to 4mg. Deb might be more tired but she may have better mobility (Deb is also showing some signs of face swelling (moon face) which is a side effect of steroid usage.) We will keep the steroid dose under review and may need to increase again if Deb starts having headaches or other symptoms caused by the tumour. We will see Dr S again in a week's time.
I have also contacted Birmingham City Council and arranged for them to carry out a social care assessment. Hopefully they will be coming later this week.
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