Zyprexa, An Atypical Antipsychotic

I was exhausted around 10pm tonight, something which (if you know me) is an incredibly odd occurence. Even on those nights where I have to go to bed due to some early obligation in the morning, I will still end up going to bed at around midnight or 1am. I spent most of my weekend working on two English assignments, a poem and a novel. My brain is fried, which probably explains my extreme case of wanting to sleep.

Random context aside, WHAT THE ACTUAL F%$K?

I did plan on sleeping early, right up until the point where my mom called me frantically. My dad had slipped and was sitting on the bathroom floor. He did not have the energy to pull himself up. He had a bout of Chemo around 6 days ago, so it is to be expected that he will be drained. It is so strange though, because during his first cycle of chemo (a few weeks ago), you would never say that he had undergone it. He seemed perfectly normal, as normal as somebody with cancer can be. Yet this time, the effects seemed to be sharp. Each day he seemed to be exhausted, sleeping for ridiculous amounts of time.

Tonight has been a scary affair. As I've mentioned already, my dad could not even pick himself off the floor. I had to help him up. He struggled to walk, in the sense that he either had very little energy to do so, or he just didn't seem to have any correct control over his muscles. Even when he speaks, it seems like he struggled to formulate the words. My sister and I know that Chemo is draining, but this is something that just seemed extremely odd. My dad went from being the perfectly able, strong adult, to a feeble elderly man. It was shocking to say the least, it made me fully aware of my dads mortality (which funnily enough, is the topic I wrote about in one of my essays - John Keats sonnet, When I have fears that I may cease to be). Anyways, following my dads chemo earlier in the week, he was extremely nauseous. We enquired with the doctor, and he gave us some medicine to counteract these side effects of chemo. My sister and I could only pinpoint (or suspect) that my dads worsening condition could be attributed to the drug he had been given, because that is when his condition started to go to hell. Remember my blog on Thursday night? Yeah, that is the day he first started taking that drug.

So what is this drug you ask? I know Google isn't a doctor who has multiple qualifications, but hey, its a good starting point for learning more about the unknown. These are just some of the articles explaining what this drug is:

Read this, this, and this...

So again I ask you, WHAT THE ACTUAL F%$k?!?! Am I reading correctly?!?!

Please explain to me, random Internet user, why my dad who has cancer, is on an anti psychotic drug which is normally used for bipolar disorder or schizophrenia? Just read through the articles above. NONE of them have anything to say about the drugs relevence to anti-nausea (which is what we requested in the first place). Many of the side effects are what my dad has shown or is showing tonight. My sister was telling me how earlier today he was trying to explain how he couldn't feel anything. Numbness is one of the possible side effects.

We are going to the doctor tomorrow, he is meant to have a shorter bout of chemo. In this condition, I doubt that will happen. Thankfully, he finished his trial of that drug tongight, so hopefully the side effects will kindly piss off during the course of tomorrow. Man, its freaking worrying! Some of the drugs side effects are fatal! That doc better be prepared to explain himself tomorrow, because from my perspective, his prescription was a death just waiting to happen O_o

12:36am...