Right before Christmas I found out that my dad has prostate cancer. We had to wait 2 more weeks to find out that it had spread to his bones too. I feel like his doctors aren’t being as aggressive as they need to be. Long delays in treatment. Now the doctor says it is advanced and it is aggressive. Since it spread to his bones that is considered stage 4. When I did some online research I saw where only 47% of men live 1 year when they are at this stage. This still doesn’t seem real to me. I don’t want it to be real. I don’t want to lose my Dad!!! I am still in denial about it. I think he is too. I wish I could wake up and realize that this has just been a really bad nightmare. Everything is happening so quickly. I don’t like change anyhow and the past 3 months have been pretty intense with so many really bad, really fast, really intense changes. He seemed ok last November but before Christmas he went downhill fast. He couldn’t urinate for 3 days before he agreed he needed an emergency appointment to see his dr. He is 82. I know I should feel lucky that he lived as long as he did but I expected more. His mother and grandmother lived into to be 93 and 98 so I always thought my dad would make it to 100. There is never a good time to lose someone you love so much. There is never enough time to spend with someone you love so much. He was always the strong one. He was always responsible, protective, reliable, rational and smart. What bothers me the most about all of this is knowing how scary this must be for him and the feeling of helplessness that me, him and the rest of my family feel. He doesn’t want to talk about it with me or my sister. I feel like he is sliding off a cliff and we are all struggling to keep him from falling but we are losing our grip and he is slipping away. I don’t know how he can even get any sleep knowing that he is only going to continue to get worse and worse until it finally kills him. What a cruel torture this horrible thing is! Whenever I wake up and whenever I try to go to sleep is when I feel the most scared, helpless, hopeless and emotional about all of this. I never lost anyone *this* close to me before although I have lost 6 friends to cancer. So now it’s going to take my Dad too?!!! Oh how I wish there was a cure for cancer and I wish it wasn’t already too late to stop the inevitable from happening. :(

UPDATE: Well my dad saw his urologist today and it went better than I thought it would. He had to have a shot in his stomach. Literally. But the dr says it could last a year, 5 years, 10 years... we never know how people's bodies will react to it. If it doesn't help then they'll try something else. I still hope for a cure but I am also relieved that it doesn't sound as hopeless as I thought it was. He does have to keep the catheter in for at least 3 more weeks though. He has already had it in for 2 weeks.