I have posted a little request for more information on www.cancerforums.net. I have been very grateful for the replies received.

Please check out the post http://cancerforums.net/about7167.html

Today was the first day of the holy month of Ramadan. I have decided that this year I will try my very best to pray 5 times a day. I’ll pray for my fathers life, pray for strength, pray for forgiveness and pray for guidance.

It has again been quite a fruitless day. I chased the respiratory nurse at the hospital this afternoon only to be told that the results will be given to us in person tomorrow. Apparently my fathers case and results were discussed during the panel meeting and the specialist would like to discuss the next step with us.

This is where I have a problem. Every time my father has attended a hospital or clinic he has been disappointed and the experience has chipped away at his moral and mental strength. He is drained at the moment and I am afraid the meeting at the hospital will do more harm than good. Unless of course it is very very good news, which in our experience has not been the case.

The diet and nutritional supplements he has been taking have proved very positive. The day sweats, shivers and fever have reduced. Exactly what the palliative treatment would have accomplished. Chances are that we will still go for radiotherapy or chemotherapy though.

So tomorrow we will be going to the GP to discuss the results of the bloods he gave yesterday, then we are off to see the private Orthopedic surgeon and lastly if we rush we will be able to see the lung specialist who will tell us the bad news about the PET scan results. I’m being realistic.

I received a phone call from the respiratory nurse yesterday in response to a request for the PET scan results and white blood cell count and LFT results.

She confirmed that the results were in, but the consultant would like to confer with the other specialists before talking to me. She will call me on Thursday with a view to arranging a face to face appointment during the day clinic on Tuesday.

I’m not sure what to make of this, are results that bad that the consultant requires support as to what decision to take next. On the other hand the results may be good and perhaps the cancer has not spread to the lymph nodes allowing the possibility of surgery.

My experience has shown that having an optimistic approach leads to disappointment. I have to be realistic, we all do but at the same time we must not loose our hope.

My father is following a very strict regime of supplements to boost his well being and condition and revitalize his body. We want to strengthen his immune system and give body the ammunition to fight against the cancer. The foundation of my fathers treatment stems from the Gerson institute of thinking, whilst not as strict, it takes the fundamental principles from the program. I will publish our program soon.

My father has been on this program for over 3 weeks now and has shown improvement in that his day sweats have substantially if not totally reduced. He does not shiver and his temperature is stable. These are the palliative results that were offered by the gentle radiation treatment initially, we are obtaining them through improvement of the diet and supplements. Inshallah I hope to see more improvements as we move forward with the program.

More information can be found with regards to the Gerson Institute here http://www.gerson.org/

One month today I received my desperate fathers call from the hospital pleading me to take him home. They had told him he had cancer.

“Time flys when you want it to crawl.”

Have I been doing the best I can by going ahead with the PET scan, applying the strict nutritional supplements to his diet and asking for a second opinion?

His knee is literally his Achilles heal, he needs to be mobile and more importantly he needs to be pain free. That’s why following last Monday’s meeting we have decided

We have arranged an appointment with the Dove clinic on Monday afternoon where we will discuss Photodynamic therapy and Intravenous Vitamin C therapy.

“Am I doing the right thing?”

I think it’s time to think seriously about going private for the knee replacement surgery. I don’t think we are going to get anywhere by waiting for the NHS. Next week I hope to aggressively pursue this.

Tomorrow I will sit and write down what and when my father is taking his supliments.

Drove dad to get his PET scan today. It turned out to be a long day but thankfully dad was quite stable all day. He was in high spirits throughout the drive.

Just in case I didn’t elaborate on what a PET scan was, here’s a little explanation on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography

Hopefully we should have the results back by Thursday.

In addition to this, I was hunting around the web for any possible cases of Knee replacement surgery carried out on lung cancer sufferers and came across this article.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070903204803.htm

This got me thinking, what if there really is a link between arthritis of the knee and non-small cell lung cancer. I guess it’s not something we would have known and there’s no point dwelling on what we ’should have done’ in the past.

Sorry for the delay in updating this blog.

I have spent the last few day’s with my father helping out my brothers with the business.

Next week is a big week, as predicted the PET scan appointment has arrived and is scheduled for Tuesday at 12.30pm. We also have an appointment with the knee replacement surgeon on Monday morning.

My father is feeling better but still occasionally sweats and has the shivers. His temperature is remaining constant though.

We are trying to get him to walk more to exercise his muscles as just lying on the Sofa is not a good idea.

And we have a little distraction at the moment which is focusing every ones attention…..

More on that later.

We have decided to go ahead and arrange a PET scan on the premise my father is going for the Radical option. This is purely a formality to enable this to happen. The results will dictate whether we go for the gentle radiotherapy building up to the Radical option.

We should get an appointment time sometime next week.

I have also arranged an appointment with the NHS knee specialist on the 3rd Sept to discuss when and if he can go ahead with treatment.

Speaking to the Private sector, they are fairly certain that once radiation therapy has began, my father’s immune system will be too week to withstand any knee replacement surgery.

Let us pray.