hi my dad has a malignant brain tumour- it’s a secondary. Team have decided to do 5 sessions of radium for palliative reasons. Just wondering how long we are talking- days weeks months?
Sorry to hear about your father. It is a very scary and worrying time, I do hope you have plenty of support around you.
My Dad was diagnosed in April 2015 with bowel cancer it had spread to his lungs and liver (secondary). He was classed as stage 4 incurable at the time of diagnosis. Palliative chemotherapy was what he would be given. No cure intended, chemotherapy would only help prolong his life. Two years later bringing us to April last year he was taken to the hospital by my mum after behaving out of character and forgetting the most obvious things like where the toilet was etc. We then found out the cancer had spread to his brain. There qas a fluid build up in the brain and it was pressing against it so they decided to perform surgery and try and drain the fluid. We assumed this would help massively and he would be more or less back to himself. We was wrong and the surgery barely did anything for him. Unfortunately for him nothing could be done, no chemo and no radiotherapy. And my Dad deteoriated rapidly due to the brain. It was quite horrific how it affects the patient and it is very sad. My Dad passed away in August. So he died within 4 months of finding out his cancer had spread to the brain. Now I don't mean to scare you and I'm definitely no doctor. But I did do a lot of reading when my Dad's cancer went to the brain and from what I had read up most patients survive for no more than 18 months depending how aggressive it is. My Dad's was aggressive so he only lived 4 months, bearing in mind he had no treatment options. It was a long process of watching him deteoriate and dying, it wasn't a sudden thing that just happened one day. We were well aware of the end of life symptoms and he experienced nearly all of them so we knew when the end was near.
i assume you mean Radiotherapy rather than radium. I believe radium is given for prostrate cancer that has spread to the bones, but then you don’t mention his primary.
I thonk its inportant to understand there aren’t hard and fast rules. When my partner was first diagnosed I thought that someone would know how long she had but each person responds differently.
I have felt that being positive, aiming to understand the treatments and tackling each new challenge as it came along has been helpful in ensuring the longevity of my partner’s survival and the quality of life along the way. My partner has had radio to three areas of the spine, to the chest, shoulder and femur every time she’s been fortunate to see tumours shrink and a reduction in symptoms including pain I hope that your Father proves as responsive travelling back and forth to the hospital is exhaust so helping him with the journey and cooking meals etc to give Home a break could help and will mean there’s lots you can do for him
the set up ob this sute sure means I can’t scrill back to check for typos and as I’m typing on a phone they are likely my apologies for that
