Hi, firstly let me say how sorry I am about your Dad. I am going through a similar at the moment. My Mum has just been diagnosed with Lung cancer, like your Dad she had been a heavy smoker for all of her adult life until she gave up in 2022, she's now 70. She has had a missed diagnosis (the hospital was aware of the mass on a previous scan but didn't follow it up) so my emotions at the moment are like a rollercoaster of sadness, fear and anger. 

We don't yet know if it has spread as she had a PET-CT scan yesterday so there is so much that is unknown which is very scary. I'm 47 but this has made me feel like a scared child again. Please take some comfort that you are not alone, sadly there are many of us who know what you are going through x

Hi, firstly let me say how sorry I am about your Dad. I am going through a similar at the moment. My Mum has just been diagnosed with Lung cancer, like your Dad she had been a heavy smoker for all of her adult life until she gave up in 2022, she's now 70. She has had a missed diagnosis (the hospital was aware of the mass on a previous scan but didn't follow it up) so my emotions at the moment are like a rollercoaster of sadness, fear and anger. 

We don't yet know if it has spread as she had a PET-CT scan yesterday so there is so much that is unknown which is very scary. I'm 47 but this has made me feel like a scared child again. Please take some comfort that you are not alone, sadly there are many of us who know what you are going through x

Hi Mia, thank you for your message - it feels less lonely knowing that there are people like us going through it. I'm sending so much love, care and support to not only your mum but you too. It's a strange feeling, I feel like I've been parenting my parent and seeing them in such a vulnerable way with little I can do to ease their mind especially when we're in that limbo of what the outcome will be.

I understand that rollercoaster you speak of too and I'm so sorry to hear that they missed the diagnosis; I can imagine that the wait and wondering has also caused you to feel all over the place too. We have a very lovely specialist nurse who has been very kind and given me her time to just let me offload. Some days are harder than others, had a pretty bad one recently as I think the unknown for him has created that snappy overwhelming feeling where he can't think straight then when you're also not feeling too strong it stings. He gets out of breath easily as where the mass is, is pressing on a nerve which is also causing his voice to be hoarse plus he's lost weight which he connects to ' bad cancer.' I live 4 hours away too which can be tricky and I worry about him looking after himself. As you can imagine, he's still an active smoker and what he call his 'chemical crutch' for when things get tough is a cigarette so it feels like there is that addiction too. 

xxx