update on dad

Peachy,
Don’t give up and
Peachy,
Don’t give up and don’t think there isn’t anything you can do even if surgery isn’t an option. If your dad wants to fight them help him do it because I am sure there are a lot of people that really enjoy having him around 
My dad had Stage III, T3N1M0 cancer and is 78 with complications of diabetes, high blood pressure. He was very active (Left the house at 10 and would return at 6 or six) has hobbies that keep him busy and is very social, generally in good health with a positive attitude. He got a second opinion which was vastly different than his first diagnosis.
So we heard . . . He is a candidate for surgery, maybe he is too old for surgery, he should do 3, no 1, no 2 chemo agents, he should have radiation, no he shouldn’t have radiation . . . maybe he can’t tolerate any radiation. I think you get the drift. So anyway we got that book 100 questions and answers to esophageal cancer and read it and talked and got advice from people on this site. My father said he wasn’t going to let someone else decide if he was going to live or die and he was going to fight this thing because he still had a lot of good years left in him and a lot of unfinished things to do.
Fast forward – the treatment - settled on chemo and radiation and would determine whether surgery is appropriate after he completes the treatment with considerations of quality of life. The oncologist at Sloan said that they have seen the chemo and radiation completely eliminate a tumor. They settled on two chemo agents which would do the least damage to his liver --- carboplatin and taxol --- so fast forward some more.
After his first round of chemo they did a pet scan (no radiation yet). The results were remarkable and astounded the doctors. Yes prayer and positive attitude will always confound someone looking at statistics. Anyway, the pet scan indicated that there was no activity in the lymph nodes which had earlier been staged with active cancer and the tumor in his esophagus had a reduced SUV activity from 10 to 4.1 (at 3 the doctors told my dad that the tumor would be considered inactive). Really amazing. So then they start the radiation and good news bad news happens.
His tumor has shrunk so much after 10 treatments (GOOD NEWS) that the stent in his esophagus to help him swallow falls into his stomach and he has to have emergency surgery to remove it from his stomach and insert a new one. Plus his white blood count is nonexistent so they have to delay any more chemo. He is very weak right now but he will resume radiation tomorrow and chemo as soon as his blood count is up. But right now I am telling him this is a cloud with a wonderful silver lining and now 2 days post surgery he is still scared but taking all this in stride. I go to visit him in New Orleans for a week in May, my Uncle is going down next week and in the meantime we are going to try to arrange having someone come in to help out. So it won’t be easy --- but it definitely is worth it.

Let me know if I can help in any way.

Cindy