My father recently had WRBT due to the presence of 4 lesions in his brain (was Dx with NSCLC in November 2011), which were discovered after some seizuers in his leg. He was put on steroids and keppra, and about 2 weeks after the completion of the WBRT he started attempting to reduce the steroids. After about 2 weeks of this, he started to cough (again), get a few seizures in his leg, and feel more fatigued than usual. As a result he was given Amoxicilyn and told to reincrease his steroid dose. Most recently he has started to have bone pain which initially was over his whole body, but now is more limited to his two legs. He has been prescribed with Oxycodone for the pain, and we have an appointment for a full body scan.
I would like to know if you have seen this in previous patients, and would like to know what specifically could be causing his pain.
Thanks,
faith44
Reply # - August 15, 2012, 07:45 AM
Reply To: Bone pain – WBRT
Hello Faith and welcome to Grace. I'm so sorry your father is going through this.
People often have to titrate up and down on steroids to find the dose they still need so that sounds pretty typical. Too your dad may need over 3 months from the end of WBR to see the final benefits of radiation. So the seizures still have a very good chance of subsiding.
As far as the scan goes, it sounds like his doctors have suspicions about other metastases and want to rule that out. Too many times lung cancer causes so many varying symptoms that their combinations of problems are impossible to tease apart. It sounds like his team is chasing down his. I hope and expect he will recover from these symptoms and look back at this as a bump in the road.
I will ask one of our faculty to comment on body pain and if it it possibly related to the WBR. You should get a reply by the end of the day.
I'm glad to hear he is being treated with pain meds and hope they are sufficient to ease his pain.
Below are blog/posts you may not have read yet and can give you a better understanding.
http://cancergrace.org/lung/2007/04/05/intro-to-brain-mets/
this is a forum discussion on wbr and seizures that may help http://cancergrace.org/forums/index.php?topic=10782.0
In general our site search function works better than most.
Hope for tomorrow being a better day,
Janine
forum moderator
Reply # - August 15, 2012, 01:16 PM
Reply To: Bone pain – WBRT
Hi...
Everything noted by Janine is correct. I would not expect any bone pain or body pain as a result of the brain irradiation. I agree with your physicians to evaluate for other causes...
Best wishes,
Dr Loiselle
Reply # - August 15, 2012, 11:15 PM
Reply To: Bone pain – WBRT
Thanks Janine and Dr. Loiselle for your responses.