DX 11/7/2011 and......STILL NO TREATMENT PLAN - Case considered a 'Wild Card'

Hello everyone, I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’m sure you all know, doctors more doctors, holidays, running around and tending to a 3 year old. Yeah so pretty much the gray hairs are just popping in every day.

My father was diagnosed on November 7, 2011 with Adenocarcinoma. He is 74 years old. He has gone through numerous testing and his staging has been set. He is Stage II – T3, N0, M0, G1.

My father has several health issues that have been causing numerous roadblocks. Particularly the 10% of the remaining kidney function of his only kidney. My fathers ‘case’ was brought in front of the hospital board we are attending. There have been two other scares/huddles we had to encounter. 1) Pet Test revealed a “tiny” lighted area at the head of the pancreas – testing done determined unrelated. 2) During the hospital board meeting the doctors reviewed my father’s test results and case and then found something on the liver – testing done determined unrelated. My father’s “Management Team” aren’t on the same page and it is extremely frustrating.

Here are some of my father’s health concerns:
--ESRD = End Stage Renal Failure – 1 kidney only functioning at 10%. My father had fistula surgery in 2009 because his Nephrologist said he was very close to being on dialysis. My father has watched his diet and has not had to go on dialysis. Yes, my family understands 10% is close to null but my father is a very stubborn Italian man – God love him. My dad is all for Radiation and he keeps telling my family that should do it but we know it won’t.-
--COPD = lung function 43%
--High Blood Pressure
--Diabetic
--Underactive thyroid
--Enlarged Prostrate

Here are my father’s Management Team’s recommendations:
--Oncologist = chemo/radiation maybe surgery. If chemo 1st suggestion Carboplatin/5FU now it just recently changed to Cisplatin. And everything else this doctor says is “let’s see what every other doctor thinks”.
-- Nephrologist = at 1st he was not optimistic about any treatment. Now he suggests chemo/radiation/surgery.
-- Surgeon = surgery little worried about my father’s lung function
--Radiologist – If dad just wishes to have radiation he will want to do 2x a day. But he feels dad’s best option would be chemo/radiation/dialysis and no surgery. He keeps telling us that chemo and radiation are equivalent to having surgery (in Europe studies) and is highly against surgery for my father.
He would like my father’s schedule to be something like this: chemo/radiation in the morning and dialysis 2-3 hours later. He also knows the kidney is close to null and will be once chemo is given to my father. He is hoping that by doing dialysis treatment after chemo/radiation treatment, this ‘specific’ process will remove the chemo/toxins from my dad’s system and not do so much harm to the remaining kidney. Once chemo and radiation is done he suggest trying to wean my father off dialysis and see if the kidney can still function on its own even just a little so my dad won’t have to do dialysis 3x’s a week for 4-5 hours each day. My entire family is really concerned that this may be too much for my father to handle????

It’s just been a bunch of circles and circles. We have an appointment for a second opinion at Memorial Sloan Kettering on 1/10/12 with two well knows doctors. I feel in one way we are wasting more time by getting this second opinion but then again these doctors we are dealing with now are just not matching up and they keep changing their minds. From what I understand it is now a scientific treatment plan they must establish which is very scary.

I don’t know if I will get more time with my father treating him or not treating him. I feel if you touch him he will break if you don’t touch him he will break. It is so frustrating not being able to even battle this. I am even more frustrated knowing this cancer is growing inside my father and it has been almost 2 months with a whole bunch of scares, tests, doctors and still no treatment plan.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. It is very hard to find cancer patients receiving chemo/radiation and dialysis all at once.

You all are always and forever in my prayers,
Dawn Marie for Calabrian Fighter Joe