My Dad

[sumi]

 

[Nyboy]

I can understand your brother only wanting to help with the medical equipment and your father getting insulted. When my dad came home from hospital he wold lose bladder control at night. Every day my mom was washing bed sheets underwear and pj was a mountain of laundry. I suggested my dad wear a adult diaper at night. Lets just say I had to leave in a hurry after that suggestion. man are very prideful, hopefully your brother will cool off and come back to help.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Hi Journey, I just found this thread. I am assuming they will do a biopsy to find out for sure what kind of cancer it is. I am not familiar with brain primary cancer. My husband has lung cancer that went to the brain. The surgery was the easy part. He recovered well. They put him on Keppra immediately when he went into the hospital. You can have seizures from the tumors or the surgery or even from radiation. I am not sure why your dad would have chemo if his tumor was brain and that it is primary because chemo does not cross the blood brain barrier. They usually do radiation. DH is doing well. He is on immunotherapy, which is totally different than chemo. He is on Opdivo which will make your immune system wake up and get to work and it is shrinking the tumors in his brain because your brain has an immune system. I am not sure if from Keppra, or Norco for pain, or from radiation, or all the damage the large tumor had caused - his brain was pushed over to the left, but that all went back to normal, and swelling is gone, but he does some odd things. He has a little trouble with memory, but more like walking into a room and forget why he walked in there, but I do that. He is driving, but it worries me, his reaction time, but probably no worse than a lot of older drivers. I do not want him left alone. Your brother and yourself will have your hands full, especially since that is his home. DH was tired a lot at first. Chemo and radiation wore him out and he was losing weight and I had to watch over and care for him, making trips to the emergency room, doctor appointments, reading everything about medicine, side effects, chemo, radiation, and now this immunotherapy. The immunothearpy is a miracle. I am not sure what your dad has, but there might be a type of this treatment for him. The tumors in his brain shrank, one disappeared, nothing grew, nothing new, and the primary lung tumor shrank so much the doctor was beside himself happy and all the lymph nodes shrank. He gained 10 pounds and really just started to change in strength and being awake and he is back in the yard working with compost and talking of going to work for a couple hours a couple of days a week. He has sort of arthritis symptoms with his hands, back and bursitis type swelling in his ankle, foot area. Like Steve said, you have to take care of yourself. I slowed way down. I quit worrying about things tomorrow and just got through each day. Praying for you. I hope this helps.

 

[ninnymary]

GWR, so glad your husband is doing so well. I wonder if our prayers worked?

Mary

 

[ninnymary]

Journey, I'm praying for you and your dad.

Mary

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

GWR, so glad your husband is doing so well. I wonder if our prayers worked?

Mary

You bet they did!

 

[journey11]

Hi Journey, I just found this thread. I am assuming they will do a biopsy to find out for sure what kind of cancer it is. I am not familiar with brain primary cancer. My husband has lung cancer that went to the brain. The surgery was the easy part. He recovered well. They put him on Keppra immediately when he went into the hospital. You can have seizures from the tumors or the surgery or even from radiation. I am not sure why your dad would have chemo if his tumor was brain and that it is primary because chemo does not cross the blood brain barrier. They usually do radiation. DH is doing well. He is on immunotherapy, which is totally different than chemo. He is on Opdivo which will make your immune system wake up and get to work and it is shrinking the tumors in his brain because your brain has an immune system. I am not sure if from Keppra, or Norco for pain, or from radiation, or all the damage the large tumor had caused - his brain was pushed over to the left, but that all went back to normal, and swelling is gone, but he does some odd things. He has a little trouble with memory, but more like walking into a room and forget why he walked in there, but I do that. He is driving, but it worries me, his reaction time, but probably no worse than a lot of older drivers. I do not want him left alone. Your brother and yourself will have your hands full, especially since that is his home. DH was tired a lot at first. Chemo and radiation wore him out and he was losing weight and I had to watch over and care for him, making trips to the emergency room, doctor appointments, reading everything about medicine, side effects, chemo, radiation, and now this immunotherapy. The immunothearpy is a miracle. I am not sure what your dad has, but there might be a type of this treatment for him. The tumors in his brain shrank, one disappeared, nothing grew, nothing new, and the primary lung tumor shrank so much the doctor was beside himself happy and all the lymph nodes shrank. He gained 10 pounds and really just started to change in strength and being awake and he is back in the yard working with compost and talking of going to work for a couple hours a couple of days a week. He has sort of arthritis symptoms with his hands, back and bursitis type swelling in his ankle, foot area. Like Steve said, you have to take care of yourself. I slowed way down. I quit worrying about things tomorrow and just got through each day. Praying for you. I hope this helps.

GWR, I am so glad to hear that your husband is doing so much better. That is such good news. Prayer works!

We hadn't had the first appt with the cancer center yet, so I am not sure what exactly their treatment plan will entail. I hope immunotherapy will be an option for my dad too. It must be fairly new then? We have also heard about a clinical trial at Duke university (4 hour drive from here) where they are inoculating the center of a single glioblastoma tumor via a tiny catheter with a deactivated polio virus solution. It also triggers the immune system to attack the tumor. Their earliest patients have been in remission for 3 years. It will be some time before we'll know if my dad is eligible for the study. The tumor has to reoccur and there be only one. My dad's cancer is Stage 4 glioblastoma, the most aggressive of the brain cancers.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

GWR, I am so glad to hear that your husband is doing so much better. That is such good news. Prayer works!

We hadn't had the first appt with the cancer center yet, so I am not sure what exactly their treatment plan will entail. I hope immunotherapy will be an option for my dad too. It must be fairly new then? We have also heard about a clinical trial at Duke university (4 hour drive from here) where they are inoculating the center of a single glioblastoma tumor via a tiny catheter with a deactivated polio virus solution. It also triggers the immune system to attack the tumor. Their earliest patients have been in remission for 3 years. It will be some time before we'll know if my dad is eligible for the study. The tumor has to reoccur and there be only one. My dad's cancer is Stage 4 glioblastoma, the most aggressive of the brain cancers.

I have not looked up anything for glioblastoma. I spend my time looking up lung cancer and brain metastasis. I have heard a little of the polio virus being used. I just looked and the chemotherapy part I do not understand because I have not heard of the ones being used for glioblastoma. This link I have does speak of immunotherapy, so hopefully it will be an option. When DH first was diagnosed, he was not offered immunotherapy. You have to fail a platinum based chemotherapy first to qualify, which after 2 rounds of chemo he had progression into his spine, so they stopped chemotherapy. I have read that it will be offered for first treatment, but I am not sure if that has happened yet. There is a cancer website called inspire that you can join and join a group for glioblastoma. Just google Inspire, glioblastoma. I have found most of my information from that website and reading about what other people are being treated with and side effects. I was told almost no hope really back in May. He had about 6 months to live and now it has been 9 months today that he went to the ER and told that horrible news. Here is the link I found with immunotherapy. http://www.cancerresearch.org/cancer-immunotherapy/impacting-all-cancers/brain-cancer

 

[Poka_Doodle]

So glad they are both doing well.

 

[baymule]

@Gardening with Rabbits and @journey11 my prayers are with both of you.