It started about a month ago. Shortly after my dad's 60th birthday, my mum and dad, who live in Romania, were telling me he stopped eating and was losing weight. From there he had upper back and leg pain that got him into A&E, where they gave him an ultrasound referral. The doctor who did the ultrasound said he'd never seen a liver with so many cysts but his opinion was that it wasn't cancer and his other organs looked OK. His blood tests however told another story and his liver was obviously struggling.
Got admitted into hospital where he started getting worse, blood tests were worsening, his GGT went as high as 1866, his direct bilirubin to 3.5. They did a CT scan that showed a 6cm tumour on his lung, tens of metastatic lesions on his liver, pleural invasion, metastatic lesion on the top of his femur, bilateral mediastinal and hilar adenopathy, fractured ribs, enlarged liver and possible colon metastatic infiltration. They sent him home, as that hospital didn't have a pulmonary oncology department. We tried getting him into another hospital but there were no beds. He was sent back to my hometown, where the head of the oncology department, without even a face to face consult, just by his CT and blood results, said a biopsy would cause more harm that good, his liver would not stand chemo and radiotherapy would be useless.
He was sent home where my mum has been struggling, as he can't stand, he is very weak and not eating and can barely speak. He's had minor strokes in the past and one earlier this year, so I'm worried about that too. I'm flying home as soon as I can, but I'm not sure I can accept what everyone else is saying, that there is nothing to do. No more tests, no treatment, how can that be? He doesn't have a full diagnosis and is just wasting away. I don't want him to suffer any more than he needs to but is there really nothing else left to do?
My mum had bilateral breast cancer 2 years ago, and I fought with her through diagnosis, mastectomy and chemo, but we had options. I feel like they're not giving us any options at all now. The only thing I can think of is getting a second opinion but everyone is saying that it won't be any different.
I'm powerless and I'm praying that he lasts at least until Monday night when my flight is. I can't believe that I have to go through this again and I can't believe how fast this happened. I saw him in September and he was doing so well. I'm destroyed, my parents have had such sad lives, poverty, losing loved ones to cancer, they've never travelled anywhere, had any sort of pleasures in their lives and I thought I would have all this time to make some of their dreams come true.
The doctors have said he's got a month or two, treatment would likely steal that time from him, being in hospital in covid would compound that even more. For anyone else who's cared for someone with a disease course like my dad's, how much time can I hope for? What can I do? I really don't know what to do. I'm just so sorry.
Thank you for being here, I've lost so many people to cancer. My cousin passed at 33 from breast cancer, my dad's mum died from metastatic cancer too and my uncle is also dying from lung cancer, diagnosed only a couple of weeks before my dad. I feel like I'm drowning. I only had two people in my life who managed to get cured, my mum and a friend who had appendix cancer at 34. How do I cope?
