Im very sorry to hear more about your husbands behavior!!! I will be completely honest with you. This is going to be a long difficult road, especially when patients are not 100% committed to listening to every single thing their medical team and caregivers ask of them. I hope his medical chart has every single medication he takes, doses, strength of the medicine and what time he takes them noted. Juggling meds is something that could easily become life threatening. When on strong medications its difficult to remember when the last dose was taken or how much they took. At some point your husband will need to face this head on and accept help from you and his medical team. Nobody gets thru this alone! Those who try doing it alone end up suffering greatly due to their own stubbornness. Or worse... they stop their treatments when the going gets tough which lets the cancer continue to grow and will be fatal. What scares me most from your reply is your husbands habit of locking himself in and aversion to follow doctors orders. If he doesnt nourish his body it does not have the capability to properly heal, not eating and drinking will turn into some much bigger problems down the road. The minimum calories needed are 2500 and water 48-64 oz every single day. Right now he should be practicing with his feeding tube and trying to adjust his lifestyle to using the feeding tube. Its a very easy way to get the required daily calories and hydration while watching tv or sleeping. If your husband paid attention to his intake and got the daily minimums he would begin to feel so much better.

In the past Ive seen a few patients similar to your husband with their behaviors. Sadly they went thru some difficult times as a result of their own actions. At some point their caregivers pretty much told them shape up or they wont be able to help them anymore. Doctors have told them similar things and many of these overly stubborn patients unfortunately had to learn the hard way that people really were doing their best to help them. Yes, you are correct, this will be a very long haul for your husband. Im concerned about current tobacco use, that will only make the whole process so much harder to do and can make the cancer much harder to treat. I hope he will come to his senses, do some deep soul searching then get on board starting with a change in his usual routine. He needs to put a real effort into getting thru the cancer treatments and recovery, it is NOT easy and those who are not commuted to it will struggle. This isnt something anyone can do half way!

Take care of yourself! We will help you as much as possible.