You can help someone with brain cancer by providing them with emotional support, comforting them, helping them get around, helping them with paperwork, offer childcare if they have children, cook some meals for them and help around the house if they want you to do such as washing laundry, ironing, putting away groceries, mowing the lawn etc.
It is painful to have brain cancer as brain cancer and brain tumors cause headaches which can get worse when straining and coughing.
People with brain cancer and brain tumors often report that they have a headache which feels like a tension headache and some people have a headache that feels like a migraine.
Brain tumors in the back of the head may even cause a headache along with neck pain.
Brain cancer is a terminal cancer because even with treatment it is very hard to cure.
Some people have survived brain cancer with treatment but it's rare and can even come back even after having surgery.
The brain tumor that has the worst prognosis is Glioblastoma multiforme which is the most aggressive and most common primary intracranial tumor.
Even with modern therapies and treatments it is still fatal with very poor prognosis with a median survival of 14 months.
The signs that cancer has spread to the brain are.
Headache, sometimes with vomiting or nausea.
Mental changes, such as increasing memory problems.
Seizures.
Weakness or numbness on one side of the body.
Numbness.
Balance and coordination issues.
Headaches that are sometimes accompanied by nausea or vomiting.
Dizziness.
Cognitive impairment, including confusion, memory loss and personality changes.
Once cancer spreads to the brain you usually have up to 6 months to live without treatment.
With treatment you may live a few years or even longer once cancer spreads to the brain.
Once cancer spreads to the brain the cancer puts pressure on the brain and the cancer changes the function of the surrounding brain tissue which then causes symptoms such as headache, personality changes, memory loss and seizures.
The symptoms of end stage brain cancer include.
Frequent headaches.
Agitation and delirium.
Agonal breathing (gasping breaths that occur when a person is struggling to breathe)
Prolonged confusion.
Hallucinations.
Loss of appetite.
Vision loss.
Involuntary movements.
The final stages of metastatic brain cancer are drowsiness, headaches, cognitive and personality changes, poor communication, seizures, delirium (confusion and difficulty thinking), focal neurological symptoms, and dysphagia.
Metastatic brain cancer (also called secondary brain tumors) is caused by cancer cells spreading (metastasizing) to the brain from a different part of the body.
The most common types of cancer that can spread to the brain are cancers of the lung, breast, skin (melanoma), colon, kidney and thyroid gland.