Hello,

This past Christmas we found out my father's throat cancer (discovered 2 years ago very early just had a couple lympthnodes removed, no chemo or radiation) had come back and metastasized in his lungs. They found 10 tumours in one lung and 2 in there other. The doctors told us that he only really had two options: 
       1. An intensive extremly high does chemo treatment that would be 3 months long. With not great odds that it would do much good. Apparently the particular type of cancer he has doesn't respond well to chemo treatments and after the 3 month stint because it's such a high dose they wouldn't be able to try any other radiation/chemo treatments because it would be too toxic.
       2. Start an immune therapy trial that involves low does chemo medication (pill form) and immune therapy intravenous medication taken every 3 weeks. 

He decided on the immune therapy trial because the side effects are much less than chemo and if it didn't work he would still have the option of doing an intense chemotherapy treatment aftwards. The risk being the tumours could grow in the mean time because the trial takes about 5 months to tell if it's working or not.

This past week was his mid point in the trial and the results were not great. Right now it seems that his body isn't responding to the treatment at all and some of the tumours have increased in size. But because of the framework of the trial he still has 9 more weeks of treatments before we can officially tell if the treatment is going to work or not. If they don't see progress at the next scan in 9 weeks he will be removed from the trial and his only other option is chemo.

Growing up I have never really worried about my Dads health. When he was in his 20's is was an alcoholic and drug addict but he's been clean for over 30 years now and during that time has lived a very healthy and clean lifestyle. He's vegan, doesn't smoke, does yoga and meditation, has never had any typical health problems associated with getting older. Comparatively the rest of my family is extremely over weight, high blood pressure/cholesterol, breathing problems, heart issues etc and so he has always been the one as I get older (28 now) that I haven't really worried about. They found his throat cancer extremely early and the doctors made it seem almost routine like getting your tonsils out or something. 

Now I'm being confronted with the prosepect my dad won't make it to next year. My Dad and I have a very special relationship. He's Bipolar and I suffer from major depression. He has been my rock as I've faced the hurdles of coming to terms with this illness and he's the one person in my life where we can be completely 100% honest about our thoughts and feelings when we are struggling with our mental health. I now feel like an extra burden since his diagnosis because I was struggling with a mild depression before and after finding out spiraled into a full depressive episode. I've been having a hard time coming out because my rock is now trying to come to terms with his own mortality and he doesn't need the extra burden of me trying to also deal with the possibility of his death. I'm left feeling selfish confused and angry. I don't know how to support him or talk to him. I just don't know anything anymore. I feel like the worst daughter on the planet. We're big into meditation and mindfulness practices and so together we have been focused on reliquishing control and letting go of the what-ifs to live in the moment to try and keep ourselves a float. But this also has started feeling like avoidence. Trying to just go on as normal when things are anything but normal. I oscillate between feeling completely numb and completely overwhelmed with grief. I don't have any optimisim left in me after this week and my father doesn't seem too either. If this immune therapy trial doesn't end up working I don't think he will even attempt the chemo based on the odds the doctor gave him because he doesn't want to live his last moments so sick. I just want to scream. I don't know how to comprehend any of this. 

Joining the forum is my attempt at venting I guess and finding others with maybe similar experiences. 

Thanks for reading.

~Nerd