The Diagnosis

Monday, July 13th 2009 was the worst day of my life. At 9:00 AM my father, mother, sister and I went to Dana Farber to finally hear the official diagnosis of my father's illness. As it turns out, my father has probably had pancreatic cancer for about a year now. The doctors informed us that there is no way we could have known and that the disease would not have presented itself during his physical in December. Over the course of the past year the disease has spread to his liver and possibly his lungs and brain (although these are unconfirmed EDIT: (7/14/09 2:55PM) It has been confirmed that he does NOT have brain cancer :) ). The cancer has been classified as Stage IV and they have informed us that there is little to no chance that his body will ever rid itself completely of the disease. His treatment consists of chemotherapy and a pill (I can't remember the name of it) and he starts his weekly treatment this Wednesday. He will most likely feel pretty drained for 24-48 hours following the treatment and then be himself for the remainder of the week. He is SO very excited to finally stop all the testing and start the treatments; we're finally moving forward!

There are a lot of very scary statistics surrounding life expectancy and stage IV pancreatic cancer, but my Dad does not care, neither do I and neither should anyone else. I have spent the last two and a half years of my college education studying statistics and I have come to the conclusion that they mean absolutely nothing. This is especially true when it comes to health statistics because there are so many factors that vary from case to case. Even though the statistics say MOST people don't survive this disease that should not scare you, because MOST people are older than 59, MOST people have a family history of cancer, MOST people have smoked cigarettes or drank regularly, MOST people have been sick at least once over the past 22 years, and MOST people are afraid of the disease and are willing to give in. Well, my Dad isn't most people; he is the strongest, happiest, healthiest and most stubborn person I have ever known. He is not your typical cancer patient, so don't expect typical results! I have complete faith that he will live his life to the fullest and live as long as humanly possible no matter what the circumstances are.

God bless my father.