My Dad..

We recently learned my Dad has Bile Duct Cancer and also in his Liver.  We are 3 weeks into this and he is very ill, he is only 59YO and way too young for this.  I need some help with stages and sysmptons.  He has good days and certaily too may bad ones.  He was very ashie (gray color) today and felt very weak.  He has a drainage tube for his Liver externally for relief, but not feeling well at all.

For someone who has gone through this before, what can we expect?

Hi,

In my case it's my mam who's suffering from the same cancer. She's had drainage for two weeks. The first week of the drainage she was feeling very tired and very week. She had no appetite. But during the second week of the drainage she was getting a bit better.  After that she's had surgery, where a larg part of her liver was removed. We had our hopes up, because the doctor had informed us that after resection of the liver she would be feeling good and would be able to live a full live. Unfortunately, the tumor has spread toward the intestines and the pancreas. Removing a part of the pancreas would be too hard for her to sustain, so the doctor  opted not to do that. At this stage she is recovering from the 9 hour surgary fairly well. What the future will bring is very uncertain. If it hadn't spread, as the doctors had told us first, she would have had a fairly good chance. Now we've been told she might be ok for 6 months up to a year. That ofcourse being an estimate.

I wish you and your dad all the best. If the tumor hasn't spread your dad has a good chance. Hang in there. Will be thinking of you and praying for you and your dad.

All the best

Pat 

 

 

I wish I could tell you about the medical side of your situation but I can't really. My Dad was 44 and I was only 18 getting ready to go off to college when I had to go through this experience. I would love to say everything got better but it didn't. We started going to the doctor at the end of February and up until roughly the end of April/beginning of May my Dad was still able to go out and do most of the things he use to. He was a very outdoors person but during this he couldn't really go back to work. Seeing him being kept in doors all the time was the hardest thing for him which started at about the end of May. By mid June he barely had the strength to walk through the house which soon was followed by him being bedridden. By the end of July we had lost him. I was old enough to help out and watch everything occur but I wasn't really ever told exactly what was being done. I think my parents did everything they offered at the time that they thought might work. They gave my Dad several different amounts of time for him to live and he proved them wrong everytime. What really help all of us out was that we never stopped trying. Until the end he talked about what he was going to do when he got back to work and yes I knew he wasn't going to make it but I never let him know that. It's not an easy thing to go through even if you are just the onlooker so I wish you all the best in the world and wish I could help out with the medical side more.