Hello all

So a bit of background before I ask my question.

Last June my dad discovered a lump in his neck. It came up that day and it was tennis ball size. The doctors said they had known it was cancer straight away but didn’t say at the time so as not to cause worry. Anyway, it was only stage one, and aggressive. He had surgery to remove it and some surrounding tissue, and then had a course of chemo and radiotherapy. It looked like it was going to be quite a simple case and we thought it was all done and dusted.

He finished the chemo and radio in November and was ready to go back to work by early February. He’d just gone back when he came down with what we thought was pneumonia. He spent the next two months back and forth at the doctors until they finally sent him for a scan to ‘be on the safe side’. This is when they discovered tumours in his lungs. The oncologist said he was baffled as people don’t usually get cancer again this fast. He went in for more tests and it turned out that the tumours were the same cells from his original neck cancer last year. 

During this time my dad has been admitted into hospital with high calcium levels. He had a meeting with the oncologist when they told him it was incurable. The cancer had since spread to his liver, bones, and lungs. 

Hes just started chemo to ‘prolong his life’. The problem is my dad doesn’t like to ask questions and I’m confused as to whether it means terminal? Is saying incurable a new way of saying it? And has anyone else been in this position where the cancer has progressed so quickly? I feel so alone and scared.