2 days from last radiation....already tried donuts. of course, that didn't go well. He's ready to get back to real food and asked me how. I said start with smoothies. He agreed to it. I made it with some coconut milk, heavy whipping cream, pineapple, banana, cinnamon and Ancient Nutrition vanilla bone broth. I assume he kept that down. I told him there are plenty of organic soups I had already bought for post treatment. Chicken noodle and tomato basil and lentil. I will just add heavy whipping cream to add calories and fullness and turn them into creamy soups. He seemed ok with that idea. He really wants his fast food but is finding that does not work well at this point. I went into the gas station last night to make sure he did not buy tobacco because he did not plan to give it up before treatment. we will see. the regulars around here know I'm dealing with one STUBBORN man.

He's high energy today like nothing happened. Our oldest took him to the store to buy water and pop and said he brought the TV remote with him for some reason. Son is realizing I"m not crazy when I say his mind is not all there right now. He said he could not focus on anything. I think he thought i was exaggerating....now he knows! i said we should write down this stuff so we can tell him later where he used to be and how far he has come.

oh boy.

Connie, its a very good idea to write down all your husbands "off" moments. Your husbands unusual behavior should be relayed to his doctor at his next appointment. Most OC patients will have a touch of "chemo brain" but for most of us it was not too big of a deal. Write down everything you can remember and add all new events as well. You never know this could be more important than you realize.

removing this post as it repeated another one I posted???? technology failure I guess!

thank you Christine. It has been worse than I expected and even husband said he has alzheimers. It does remind me of dementia in that one moment, he has clear thinking and the next, totally off track.

My daughter hid all the keys and she even hid away his gun shells (it's hunting season) because he has lots of rifles in the bedroom with him. She said it made her feel safer to know he doesn't have access to questionable stuff right now.

My chemo brain was / is nothing like that. I forget stuff to an incredible degree (though I've had fun starting a new planner journal with lots of motivational stickers!) and my teens are good at reminding me. But it's more 'when stuff is' or 'what I promised to bring' or things that aren't a part of our regular calendar. Not stuff like taking the TV remote in the car (though I suppose I could do that by mistake, big as my bag is).

Who's in charge of his meds? Some of them can mess with memory, and that's worth checking. Also some of them mess with moods, and if his memory and his mood go weird, it's worth keeping a close eye on the meds. Check the side effects and see if any of them are adding up with each other.

he carried the remote in his hand all through walmart! i'm glad my son saw it and told me about it. son asked if he needed batteries for the remote as he couldn't figure out why dad would bring the remote to walmart!

he is taking care of his own meds.

he already takes lots of depression meds. the only mood changes have been being highly controlling and argumentative like he has always been but it's been ramped up at times from his normal.

so glad others are seeing what I've been seeing. nurses and doctors got to see how controlling and uncooperative he is. son sees he cannot react properly or timely to anything and has no idea he is doing things that are odd. he just stares at things for long periods of time trying to figure them out.

thanks for telling me that your experiences have not been THIS significant. I have no idea what is normal and what isn't from chemo/radiation other than what I read here.

and I forgot, he had tried to escape yesterday but we hid all the car keys. My son looked in the truck and he had packed a bag of work clothes, work shoes and a knife and put them in the truck. I'm writing some of this down to remember but also to share how far fetched his thinking is right now. He must have gone back into the house and gone to bed leaving the truck door open too.

Why would he pack a bag of work clothes? He is off on disability until Oct 19th and if he was going to work, wouldn't he have worn those clothes? They would fall off of him anyway as he has lost about 60 lbs.

The things your husbands doing are much more unusual than any Ive seen discussed on our forum. The "everybodys different" is the only explanation I can think of. When I think of other members reporting their "chemo brain" moments its more of a problem remembering things they were doing. For example making mac and cheese and getting everything out to start making it, leaving everything right on the counter, walking away and going back to be before they finish it. Those are relatively harmless compared to packing work clothes and a knife. Not that it matters but the knife is pretty unusual as from what you've said it wouldnt be needed for his profession. At least it wasnt a gun!!!

Ive heard some patients doing wacky things who have had a reaction to the fentanyl patch. Is your husband on them? If so .... someone must check to see what hes been taking. Now that one wouldnt be very easy! Count the patches in the box and find the one he last put on... (my nurses used to write the date on new patches when they changed them) ... if hes on the patch this needs to be done. Im concerned hes having an adverse reaction --- with how he does NOT follow any instructions, that could be the culprit. Patients using the patch MUST follow any and all instructions to the letter. Fentanyl is the strongest pain medicine ever and is not anything to mess around with. The patch is also highly sensitive!!! Something as simple as taking hot showers of soaking in a hot bath can cause the patch to release too much of the medicine and can cause an overdose.

Others have done strange things after being hospitalized. Some of the things they have done are completely out of character, like yelling at the nurses and just being nasty to all the hospital staff. That was an older member who was having a very hard time going thru recovery and being malnourished so maybe his diet comes into play?

Ive done some goofy things myself immediately after having my first biopsies taken where I opted to be knocked out. On the way home after the procedure, I had my son go thru the Ritas Italian Ice drive thru and bought several of the quarts. That was pretty rational compared to insisting he stop at Kohls so I could go shopping. I went in, took a cart and went thru every dept looking at things then about a half hour later left my half full cart and went back out to the car and fell asleep. I don t have any recollection of those things and thanked my son for picking up Ritas quarts the next day. I thought he had don e this on his own and didnt remember a thing about going there or Kohls. We still have a goods laugh about my antics to this day. My situation was caused by the anesthesia I was given and not just my every day suffering at the end of finishing rads.

Hopefully your husband will come out of this in a few weeks after he begins to start feeling better. Id say 90-95% of all patients who have rads w/ chemo report the first 2-3 weeks after rads as the worst of it. Then one day they wake up and dont feel quite as crappy as the day before. Remember the radiation continues working even though the treatments have stopped. This could be whats behind his unusual behavior. If this continues Id suggest calling his doc next week. Im sure your husband has noi idea the things hes doing, at least I hope he doesnt!!!

I will check about the patch but I have never picked up a prescription for something like that.

yes the knife could get him fired actually as they can't even have a screwdriver visible in their vehicles as it could be used as a weapon. kind of strict for the rural area we live in but it is the rule.

I don't know that he is eating even though he bought cheesecake, yogurt and milk. He's not getting up and getting those from the fridge. He does have a lot of water and pop laying on the bed with him. I know when he has gone to the bathroom as he refuses to put the seat down and the lid has been down for the past 24 hrs. I'm not sure he is even doing the feeding tube as he keeps the door closed most of the time which he has done for 25 yrs to some extent anyway because he isolates himself.

He normally would throw a fit if there was something on the floor and the bedroom floor is littered with clothes and all his supplies so I know he's not really aware of much or just no longer cares though when I'm driving him, he's hyper sensitive to a pebble hitting his car and stuff like that which is normal for him.

I'm taking note of what you and KristenS are telling me so I can determine how long I wait until I call the nutrition gal. She's my best contact person at the cancer center.

You mentioned his other meds too ... does he take Ambien for sleep? I ask that one specifically because when it doesn't work (some other med interferes or whatever), it REALLY does strange things to a person. We get the oddest Amazon orders after I have an Ambien insomnia night, which is funny ... but there are reports of people trying to sleep-drive and such on Ambien, which is not so funny. I've figured out which of my other meds personally it can be a problem with (my migraine ones, yay), but I wasn't on this during chemo and I can only imagine the havoc it might have wreaked with that or pain meds of any real strength. Also, the effects stack ... like my migraine meds mess with memory, and if I'd had that one during chemo, it would likely have made things worse ... I didn't get it till later though. They stack on each other and that's enough of a mess. If you need to compare meds and would prefer to do so privately, I don't mind if you want to talk via private message ... I too take depression and anxiety meds, and it can get interesting. And if his memory is off, then it's sure his dosing has to be off somewhere too, just because ... it's an easy one to forget. I kept a log of every single med I took for MONTHS during that time, and when and how much ... mostly to keep me on track, but also in case of emergency, so my family could pull up the file and have it handy for emergency workers, in case there'd been some funky interaction. That list was a big help, but only because I was paranoid enough to keep very accurate with it.