Hi everyone, my Dad was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer in August 2020. We are a family that live and work in Spain and as you can imagine this news is devastating. I wanted to share our experiences of going through this journey in Spain, with you all. If I can offer any insight or advice of our own experiences and learn from anyone of your experiences, I think this would be very useful.

 My Dad is 62 years old and had a stoke in 2016. He has always ben a very fit and active guy and is a real fighter. Immediately after the daignosis my Dad started 6 rounds of chemotherapy which wasn't a breeze but my Dad managed it reasonably well with manageable side effects.My Dad also opted for an immunotherapy clinical trial that he is now on - we don't know if he was accepted or whether he is taking a placebo, our oncologist here in Spain claims he doesn't know either whether my Dad had been accepted and the oncologist claims this is normal procedure here in Spain.

The oncologist said due to the fact it is stage 4 and had spread to the lymph nodes, operating wasn't an option. My Dad had really struggled swallowing before the chemotherapy started but after a few weeks of the chemotherapy, swallowing improved a lot. Over the last couple of weeks my Dad has started to struggle swallowing again. We are having scans every 6 weeks - the scans have shown a slight reduction in the lymph nodes on 2 occasions and on the other 2 occasions there has ben no change, so we are happy with this.

My Dad has blood test every 3 weeks and scans every 6 weeks. This world of cancer is all new to our family and as i'm sure you'll all agre is so scary and horrible. 

Also my Dad had covid in February whilst having chemotherapy and was kept in hospital for 4 days and they found he also had pnumonia on one lung. My Dad has recovered well from the covid but still has some symptoms.

Please feel free to reply, ask me questions and share any relevant information.

Lee