The weight loss is what is troubling me. His intake must be way below what it should be for your husband to drop 9 pounds in such a short period of time. I fell into that same cycle where I preferred to stay in bed and sleep which only made me feel worse as I was skipping my feedings. This turned into malnutrition and dehydration which led to several hospitalizations. Im very concerned about your husband starting to avoid eating and drinking. Rads get progressively more difficult as treatments continue, they even keep working after treatments have finished. He must turn this around now or he will have a much harder time than most do.

If your husband has a feeding tube, he should also have a pump to go with it. If he doesnt have the pump tell his doctor he needs one right away. His doc can send a prescription to the medical supply company you use and he can get the pump delivered within 24 hours. A visiting nurse will come out and show you both how to use the pump. This is something you can do to greatly help break his cycle of not eating or drinking. You can set up the bag of formula and program the pump so it runs overnight or even while he is sitting watching tv. As far as nausea goes, he needs to get all the extra fluids to help flush the poison (chemo) out of his system.

Your husbands daily minimums he needs to take in every single day are at least 2500 calories and 48-64 oz of water. Remember all those ounces of formula count towards his daily water intake. He absolutely MUST get this every single day. I cant stress it enough. Every single person Ive nagged on here about their intake that has done their best to hit their daily minimums has gotten thru it much easier than those who havent followed my advice. The patients who didnt hit the minimums struggled and many unfortunately went down the same path I did with being hospitalized. At one point towards the end of my rads I was so sick I actually thought I was dying. I was just malnourished and dehydrated which really can make you feel pretty bad.

I know you have your hands full, do the best you can to encourage your husband to do better with his intake. Thats the only thing that will pull him out of this bad cycle he's fallen into. Please do your best to take good care of yourself too. I know this is hard on both of you. Take advantage of anyone who has offered to help out.

Best wishes!!!