Mom's losing a lot of weight. Any advice?
Hi everyone. Mom, who is 71 years young, has been steadily losing weight recently. She has lost about 15 pounds in the last 6 months. I tried adding lots of extra calories with no success, and recently began adding Ensure drinks which haven't offered any weight gain either. Mom is 5'2" and currently at 118 pounds.
Now her doctor wants to begin running tests for cancer. Mom is scheduled to do all sorts of imaging in the next month, followed by loads more tests depending how this first series turns out. The problem is these tests are insanely expensive and mom only has Medicare.
Has anyone else had a similar situation that turned out to be something minor, not cancer related? I would like to avoid tens of thousands of dollars in tests if there are alternative smaller tests the doctor could do first.
Of course mom's health is paramount, but her doctor has been known to order lots of unnecessary tests in the past, resulting in very large out of pocket fees.
Thanks to all.
Some chronic or parasitic infections or malabsorption syndromes, usually with diarrhea could do it too.
But yeah, you have to think about CA and find out what you are dealing with. Can she get any kind of Medicare supplement going?
What does she think? Is she incapacitated? 71 isn't old.
Any one of these things I mentioned can affect whether a person eats, properly.
Mom's doctor said I could postpone the CT scan of the abdomen/pelvis until after I meet with the Gastroenterology doctor, and then if he deemed the CT scan necessary, mom could have it done at that point. We had been scheduled to have the CT scan done before the meeting with him.
So, I guess the best thing to do is wait for the Gastro doctor's consultation.
If anybody else has experience with a similar situation, your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.