Answers

The growth in his chest is largish, about 4 cm, but it's not in a position where it's bothering anything right now so we're not going to deal with it for the moment. This spot is not the same spot that's been present and unchanging in recent chest x-rays. This growth is most likely part of the metastatic melanoma, though there is a teensy teensy possibility that it is it's own unassociated tumor. No need to bother with details at this point. And here's why.

The melanoma, which started on his skin, above his right eye to be precise, went into his bloodstream, hence it became mobile, hence the term metastatic, meta-after, beyond and static-stasis, stationary, so beyond being stationary. Although they took out all the lymph nodes in the right side of his face/head when they removed the original melanoma (5 years ago) and they found no cancer in the lymph nodes and so they thought they had caught it in time, apparently they didn't. Apparently it had managed already to escape into the bloodstream and make its way to the brain and other places. One tumor was removed from the brain and apparently where there is one there are others, they are simply babies, begining to grow. Like when your block of cheese starts to turn moldy. There's a teensy spot you don't even notice and you may eat. Next time you notice and you cut off that side before you eat. And next time you go back, the whole block is suddenly covered, exponential growth maybe? I'm out of my league now and just making up analogies.

So radiation is ineffective now since radiation is location specific. Sure we could zap an area of the brain, lose that part of the brain (maybe speech, maybe sight) and pause the crabby cancer in that little place but it's an invisible web throughout the brain, so it wouldn't help. Whatever we do needs to be systemic, needs to be whole body. And by the way,

they did give him a death sentence

In case I wasn't clear.

So our focus will be the whole body, we meet with the chemotherapy doctor on Tuesday. Chemotherapy of course being poisons introduced into the body with the goal of killing the cancer more quickly than it kills the healthy tissue. The words Interferon and Interleukine-2 and CRB-2 or something and other things come into my head. I wonder if these are chemo treatments.

Fortifying my dad's immune system is another strategy. Empowering his own immune system to get rid of the cancer, slow it down, as much as possible. Certain detailed nutritional regimens would do this. I wonder if you can with nutrients fortify your own body without strenthgening the cancer???

Yesterday, a woman named either Heather or Jennifer (I thought for sure it was Jennifer and have been calling her that but then I thought I heard others call her Heather) told me about Ash versus Acid. That cancer needs an acidic environment in which to thrive. So you try to make your system as alkali (ash) as possible. There are long lists of foods and which way they fall.

Then there's Qi Gong, with an institute in China. Energetic healing work.

So... what to do? Time is limited. How to do it. What to do. What to do.

I hope that the Doctor on Tuesday will be able to give us an idea of how quickly the cancer is expected to take over (the stage of pain and debilitation), how quickly without treatment, how quickly with treatment, and since his treatment involves severe nausea, fatigue, anemia, etc. how many "good" days would he have among the bad days. I mean man, if I were my dad I'd go to China say, but wait, no, not without my family, what if it doesn't change the course and I've lost precious time with them, but wait, even in China, would I want to spend my last time with them there instead of home? But what if it helped and I was able to live many many more years? Then months away, even from them, would be worth it. We really need God's guidance for treatment procedures. We need God's guidance and because we're dolts we need it thrown in our faces obvious.


So far (being less than 2 days from the blunt talk) we're all kind of quiet, sitting with the news, an odd kind of tentative peace. I teared up once in the Doctor's office when he replied "Yes, sir" to my dad, delivering the unvarnished answer to the dreaded question my dad had dared ask. We were all starting to cry, then we came back. And today on the phone message I was leaving to update Holly, I started to cry, but held back because I was at work out in the open. So I need to perhaps cry a little. Mustn't mustn't mustn't let it get buried deeper and deeper till it's inaccessible until some traumatic eruption in the distant future. Let it out at natural occurences. Though I didn't these last two times. Perhaps I should then focus on it during a period of quiet for myself. Force the feelings. For therapeutic purposes.

How robotic do I sound?!?!

Be well. And thank you God.