Spent 30 minutes with doctor, and another 15 for testing. For the first time, I felt he took the situation very serious. By his records, I had lost 10.5 more lbs. just in the past 3 weeks. He was truly shocked, he had thought perhaps 3-5 lbs, perhaps.
For the first time, he's suspicious that it may be the dreaded "wasting" disease, usually, but not always, associate to late term cancers or other medical conditions. Does not believe it has anything to do with any of my meds, or with my PC situation. He's fearful that there may be something lurking in my body, i.e. a blood type cancer, something that MRI's and PET scans would miss. Plus he doesn't have much faith in many of today's scans, said he's seen too many times that scan simply miss stuff.
He was concerned that the 30 day trial of the antidepressant didn't do a thing for my appetite, making him more suspicious that something more sinister is going on. He said point blank, that my body was shutting down and literally starving itself to death. Said we are within a month at the most, until it might require hospitalization to where some type of feeding tubes might be needed. Said the big danger, is that some vital organ may simply shut down without warning.
He's making an emergency call to my oncologist, to bring him up to date, and see what else they might want to test or scan. He put me on still another antidepressant, one known to cause intense carb cravings, but he's not all that hopeful it will work.
Going for new x-rays in the morning, and they took a lot of blood from me today. He said that insurance company's have all but stopped doctors from testing for iron, copper, zinc, etc. They simply won't pay for them. But he's going to look into that aspect, and see if he can order some expensive blood testing. He was doubtful that the copper theory would just pop up out of the clear blue, but wasn't willing to rule it off the table.
He said I was now within 10 lbs. of being in a dangerous situation, and at the rate of weight loss in progress, that could be gone within the next 2 weeks or less. He wants to see me back at the 2 week mark this time around.
Said if it was "wasting", the scary part, is that is all but impossible sometimes to reverse the progress, so got to hope that its not that. His suspicion is also based on all the obvious muscle wasting that has taken place. He said with regular anorexia, its more about fat loss, not so much muscle loss.
He does not believe any more, that its either in my head, or that I am depressed, or having anorexia nervosa. Said that with that eating disorder, typically young women (but not always), they have hunger, but the patient continues to deny and surpass the hungry, since the body screams out for food, they eat and binge, and many end up becoming bulimic, by making themselves puke after binge eating. That is certainly not what is going on with me.
He said something bad is happening, for me to in month 5 now, of having a total and complete lack of appetite and never having any hunger pangs, no matter how faint they might be.
I kind of feel better (for him taking it so serious now) and bad (realizing how serious its getting to be) at the same time. But I feel at least this was an important step at getting to the bottom of this.
I may have thought all along that my cancer would ultimately get me, I never dreamed that I may starve to death in the meantime. I have spent an entire lifetime of eating, loving food, cooking food, eating sweets, etc. I spent the past 35 plus years of my life being a "big guy", or let's be honest, a "fat man", from overeating. So this new world of mine is bizarre at best, and makes no sense. I never once ever thought what people thought about me when I was heavy, not vain enough to care, and always pretty content about myself and who I am.
He said to try to eat as much as I can, but realizes that forced eating is only going to cause negative results such as the cramping and diarrhea. Kind of a catch 22.
That's it for now. All I ask is your prayers and support, feel like I am in capable hands, and this matter will come to a head, one way or the other.
David