NETWizz
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
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Greetings:
I am reaching out from my heart on this post.
Please take a moment this holidays season to cherish the time you have with your family and loved ones. It does not matter if it is Thanksgiving or Christmas, it does not matter if there is gift-giving or not, what matters is that you are all together as a family - THAT is the true gift of the holidays that is virtually impossible to recognize until you are about to have a great loss.
If you have a quick prayer to express thanks for being all together, you will only know how meaningful that is when virtually everyone at the table is about ready to burst into tears.
***
This year, I went to spend Thanksgiving with my family who lives about 2,400 miles (3,900 kilometers) away from me and only then did it hit me just how ill my father has become with Cancer. He seemed okay when I last saw him in December of 2019 before COVID-19 swept the world by storm. Shortly thereafter he begun coughing, but it was mild and not COVID-19. Ultimately, it was too easy to downplay the seriousness of mild, chronic cough as a blood-pressure medicine side-effect, etc. during COVID because everyone was fearful to see a doctor during that time.
Long story short the cough is being caused by lung-cancer, which had almost two years to go unchecked and spread to many other parts of his body. Now he can do practically nothing having no energy, and it hurts him to sit down, so he has to lie down. His cough is only controlled with opiate cough suppressants, and the prognosis is grim. Realistically, I have about a 5% chance ever seeing him alive again.
He does have a world-renown Oncologist (cancer doctor), and they have taken some blood to submit to drug company to test it against a new, unapproved immune-therapy Cancer drug, but thus far we have not heard anything in about a week, so I am less than hopeful. The way it realistically works from what I am inferring is that they want to pre-screen patients before admitting them to a clinical trial, so those admitted will have desirable outcomes. Basically, unless they get back to us immediately and are begging him to join the clinical trial, there is not much hope. Maybe they are just slow, but this is honestly my last shred of hope that medical science might be able to do something for him.
As for Chemotherapy, that is an option, but I doubt he has the strength to go through that.
I am reaching out from my heart on this post.
Please take a moment this holidays season to cherish the time you have with your family and loved ones. It does not matter if it is Thanksgiving or Christmas, it does not matter if there is gift-giving or not, what matters is that you are all together as a family - THAT is the true gift of the holidays that is virtually impossible to recognize until you are about to have a great loss.
If you have a quick prayer to express thanks for being all together, you will only know how meaningful that is when virtually everyone at the table is about ready to burst into tears.
***
This year, I went to spend Thanksgiving with my family who lives about 2,400 miles (3,900 kilometers) away from me and only then did it hit me just how ill my father has become with Cancer. He seemed okay when I last saw him in December of 2019 before COVID-19 swept the world by storm. Shortly thereafter he begun coughing, but it was mild and not COVID-19. Ultimately, it was too easy to downplay the seriousness of mild, chronic cough as a blood-pressure medicine side-effect, etc. during COVID because everyone was fearful to see a doctor during that time.
Long story short the cough is being caused by lung-cancer, which had almost two years to go unchecked and spread to many other parts of his body. Now he can do practically nothing having no energy, and it hurts him to sit down, so he has to lie down. His cough is only controlled with opiate cough suppressants, and the prognosis is grim. Realistically, I have about a 5% chance ever seeing him alive again.
He does have a world-renown Oncologist (cancer doctor), and they have taken some blood to submit to drug company to test it against a new, unapproved immune-therapy Cancer drug, but thus far we have not heard anything in about a week, so I am less than hopeful. The way it realistically works from what I am inferring is that they want to pre-screen patients before admitting them to a clinical trial, so those admitted will have desirable outcomes. Basically, unless they get back to us immediately and are begging him to join the clinical trial, there is not much hope. Maybe they are just slow, but this is honestly my last shred of hope that medical science might be able to do something for him.
As for Chemotherapy, that is an option, but I doubt he has the strength to go through that.
