Sarita - Just checking in...

What a buddy you are, Lil!

The wind is slowly dying down.  It was nuts!  My cats were bouncing off the walls (they love to go outside but even they knew they would have been obliterated by the 60-mph gusts; they'd stick one paw out the door and leap right back in )

My dad is okay, we haven't really talked about what he's going to do (or not do) in regards to treatment.  He probably won't end up doing anything unless the cancer starts becoming more aggressive.  He IS, however, almost recovered from his post-biopsy infection - it took forever but at least he's mobile again!  He was going absolutely bonkers when he was laid up in bed for all those weeks.

As far as my treatment goes, I'd like to try those anti-thyroid drugs first to see how I do.  If I can't tolerate 'em or they make my white count plummet too much or something, then I'll think about the radioactive treatment.  But I don't feel very comfortable killing off my thyroid just yet.  It's such an important organ!  I see the endocrinologist (a D.O., represent!) next Friday, so we'll see what he says about my idea.

Thanks for checking in girly.  How's sunny San Fran?

The problem with treating prostate cancer is that the effects of treatment have a lot of risks, especially for older men (my dad is 72).  Lots of doctors don't want to operate on them, so surgery would be difficult and also a painful recovery.  Radiation can cause permanent urinary tract damage.  If he was 40, that'd be one thing; lots of years left.  But my dad is getting up there in age, so I can see where he's coming from that he will likely choose to not treat it.  He told me that prostate cancer itself is probably the "best" cancer to get because it's so slow-growing, most men who die with prostate cancer don't actually die from the cancer, but from old age.  So that's good news.

Another thing about old people is that just as cells replace themselves very slowly, cancer replicates itself equally as slow, so almost all cancers in old people are slow-growing. My great-aunt Louise got pancriatic and liver cancer when she was 89. They gave her about 2 months to live, I think, but she lived for about 8 months and was just fine until the week before the end. One young doctor she saw wanted to remove her pancreas right then, even though the surgery itself had at least a 50% rate of death for someone her age, and then she would have still needed radiation and/or chemo for the liver. My mother told him point-blank he was crazy. He had my aunt talked into it, but my mother and stepfather and her grand-nephew talked her out of it. At her age, the cancer was going to kill her either way, but by not doing anything, she was able to get those extra months in and she lived them quite well. Even if she had lived through the surgery, she would have never recovered and surely would have been bed-ridden the rest of her days.

I don't think your father's crazy at all for leaving it alone; I think at his age he'll probably have better quality of life than if they start fooling with it. A co-worker's husband had an agressive form of prostate cancer and he got the radiation treatments and it just killed his back; it hurt him constantly after that until he died. Sometimes doctors just don't know when to leave some things alone. In a lot of cases the cure is worse than the disease.

Are you making wedding plans yet? Going to try and hurry them along?