Just to understand a bit more about diagnosis

My amazing Dad is 84 years old has a protatectomy in 2017. His psa levels had increased to 7 in may and then 24 in July. He has dementia diagnosed last year. He had various tests in August because of blood in his stools and is found to have kidney cancer and lymph nodes enlarged and pressing on kidney. He was put on hormone therapy in July which reduced his psa to 16 but that has been stopped and his oncology consultant has discharged him and advised they can do nothing further for him and advised we stop any invasive tests as we are wasting nhs resources. She had told us this 18 months before but then sent an appt letter and my m wished to continue then. Urology say he has a Gleason score of T3a and we have refused any tests because of dads immobility etc and as advised. A bag was also offered and refused as dad would not be able to cope With this. Dad is being treated symptomatically. He has periods of diarrhoea and then constipation for a couple of days but we do not know if this is because of cancer or dementia. He  also suffers from incontinence he has been told he has months to live. Now discharged from urology and oncology do you know what happens and if we have to contact someone or if they just contact us. Can you please advise us.

  • Hi JoKe, and thank you for posting.

    I’m very sorry to hear what your family is going through. It sounds like an incredibly difficult time, and I hope the following information is useful

    Now that your dad has been discharged from both oncology and urology, it sounds like he will be needing care to manage his symptoms and make him comfortable.

    Your dad will be discharged now to the care of his GP, who will be the main person to contact to coordinate his care at home. They can arrange district nurses, who can help with continence care and monitoring symptoms and the community palliative care team, who specialise in managing symptoms such as pain, and can help offer support to the family.

    You can read our information Support at home for you and your family, which explains what support is available in more detail.

    Hopefully, the hospital has been in contact with the GP. With your dad's permission, it might also be worth contacting them as well.

    We also have information for family, friends, and carers and cancer, which I hope will be useful.

    I hope this helps in some way. Please feel free to get back to us. If you would like to speak with one of our nurses, we are available between 9 am and 5 pm Mon - Fri, and you can call us on 0808 800 4040.

    Jemma

  • Thank you so much for your reply. We will contact Dads gp and look at the other information you have. It’s much appreciated as we now know what to expect or what to do next. Thank you