Lung cancer stage 4: Anyone's spouse refuse to help themselves?

Welcome to Mayo Connect @denise96. It warms my heart to see our community reaching out with care and suggestions for you.
While we are all different, being inside the head of a recently diagnosed Stage IV patient can be a confusing place. From your description, my guess is that your husband isn’t one to talk about his feelings. I’m not always great at that either, and it takes me some time to process what’s happening before I can open up and express what I’m feeling and even thinking. The loss of control and the unknown of what to expect is just too much to deal with early on. He may need some time to process, and he may never come around.
A palliative care consult may be helpful. They can often help with managing side effects, and with understanding what to expect.
Tell him that you love him, and that you need him to stick around. Ask him to try for you and if you have children or grandchildren try for them too. There are people in his life that love him and would miss him very much, reassure him of that.

In many ways it is much harder being the caregiver than the patient. I was my mom's caregiver 4 years before my own stage 4 diagnosis.

Remember the tobacco companies spent 100s of millions of dollars finding ways to make it more addictive. And the hundreds and of billions of dollars they have to pay the states demonstrates that guilt.

Ask his doctor about appetite stimulants. There are many reasons for loss of appetite. Does he complain of nausea?

Does he like ice cream? I ate tons of hot fudge sundaes and put weight back on. Make milk shakes with boost and protein powder.

Sending hope for a good outcome.

Thank you for your kind words. I pray but my husband does not believe in Jesus as our savior and does not want to talk about it. but he in on prayer chains from my friends and lots of my friends and family are praying for him. When I told him that he was on 3 prayer chains, he said, "Good for them." I replied "No. Good for you."

Hi Denise,
I'm so sorry that your husband has cancer! My husband also had stage 4 cancer but he had it for 14 years before he died last July. My husband also drank coffee but he would drink water. That's very important for anyone; healthy or not. However, what my husband didn't do is to get anymore of the Chemotherapy or Keytruda treatments after he reacted badly to them. He almost died from Keytruda. But thanks to a good primary care doctor who got my husband to the right specialist, a person who handles pancreatitis which is a known side effect of Keytruda, my husband survived. The cancer doctor was unhappy with him not agreeing to anymore treatment. (Keytruda infusions cost $25,000 each! My husband had just been approved for 10 more infusions.)

Your husband is probably frightened about the future. Anyone would be in his situation. Plus he wants his life to be the way it always was. My husband didn't want to give up smoking but he managed to. He always missed his cigarettes.

Perhaps you and your husband should pray together and let God handle the situation. After all, it is God who eventually decides when and if you will die. It is stressful and hard being a caretaker but just show your husband a lot of love and kindness. My husband and I told each other how much we loved each other everyday; to the last day of his life. I'm so glad we did! It made things easier and less stressful. Between that and praying we managed to get through the bad times. My husband is up in Heaven now with God and Jesus and he's out of pain. That helps me to get through each day since his death.

I wish you the best. I will say a prayer for the both of you.
PML