Family crisis

I have been kind of quiet lately because I've trying to deal with a family emergency. My 70-year-old father has to have his bladder removed.

He was first diagnosed with bladder cancer about 2 years ago. This form of cancer is very rare except in men who smoke. My dad smoked for about 40 years and quit about 12 years ago. When my dad was diagnosed, we learned some interesting statistics about cancer risks from smoking. When a person quits smoking their risk of heart disease and lung cancer decreases with each passing year. However, even if you quit smoking your risk of contracting bladder cancer remains high many years later. And this type of cancer is extremely rare in women or in nonsmoking men. So when he went to the doctor with his symptoms (blood in urine) the first question they asked him was "do you or did you smoke?" They also told him that this type of cancer is not hereditary so his children will not have to worry about inheriting the disease.

When they first discovered the cancer, they did a procedure (whose name I have forgotten) where they went in with a laser and zapped the tumors. The tumors were microscopic and easy to remove. Then he stayed overnight in the hospital and went home the next day. No chemo, no radiation, they don't treat this cancer with those treatments. Anyway, he has had to go in every three months and have this same procedure. It's not fun, but there are worse things. Of course, I'm not the one having to do this so I should keep my mouth shut.

My dad has always been a brooding kind of guy with a tendency toward depression. But he has a wonderful quirky sense of humor we loved as kids. My mom, when she was alive, was a very talkative and bubbly kind of person and she knew how to keep his spirits up. When my mom died in 1999 from a brain tumor, dad went into a deep depression and none of us (4 kids) knew what to do. Thank God he met a wonderful woman, Gay, who is so upbeat, funny, and we all adore her. Since his diagnosis it has been a struggle for Gay and all of us kids to keep dad from sinking into a deep depression. He won't talk to his doctor and completely denies it. Every three months when he has these procedures when they find and remove more tumors he says things like "I'm going to die so what's the use?" He eventually snaps out of it but it has been a seesaw around our family to go through this every three months.

A few days ago dad went in for this procedure again and the doctor found many more tumors (and larger ones as well) than she has seen in the past and has called it quits. She says that there are no more treatments she can try (they have tried everything). So she recommended to dad that he have his bladder removed.

Dad and Gay are devastated. All four of us have talked to dad and are trying to cheer him up. We are trying to tell him that this is for the best really. He won't have to have this awful procedure every 3 months and have to worry about the possibility that the tumors will grow through the bladder lining into the abdomen which would spread the cancer. Of course, it's easy for me to say this, it's not my body, but I hope if he thinks about it he'll come to see that wearing a bag is better than constant worries about cancer. I talked to him tonight and he sounds a bit more cheerful, or maybe faking cheerful. But that works for me.

Since he got the news Dad has been acting up which is understandable but very frustrating. And my brother is pissing me off too. Maybe I'll blog about that later since I have droned on long enough. Sorry.