Hearing the words Cancer being said for the first time

This is my first time at writing a blog, I guess i';m writing this in the hope of writing down all the questions and feelings which I hold inside. I know that people are here to support but there are somethings which I don't know how to explain. I hope that this is a way for me to answer or calm down my own mind. For those of you reading this, if this is incoherent, I'm sorry.... So firstly the background, the story.... My father was brought into hospital last Friday 3rd July for breathing difficulties. He was X-rayed and identified that his left lung was filled with fluid (plueral effusion), he stayed over till Monday 6th July, they told my father that he had some spots in his lungs and they needed to take samples and send him home. Having a look at the discharge notes it said ?malignancy?TB? reading the words you have an association in your mind that malignancy is related to cancer, my mind was racing and thinking and hoping it was TB. TB to me is curable, malignancy = cancer which is the worst and I didn't know what to think. Next step was to wait for the results on Thursday, the 3 days in between was hard, I was in limbo, I couldn't speak to a doctor and didn't know what to think or do. On Thursday 9th July, I took my father back to the hospital, at this point my father had even more trouble breathing and was having difficulty walking down the hall to see the consultant. When we entered into the room there was the consultant and a lady sitting next to her. Immediately your mind thinks something is wrong, at first i thought the hospital did something wrong and she was there as a lawyer, especially when she started taking notes. My father is chinese and even though he has lived here for over 34 years (since i was born) english is not his first language. The doctor started to explain what had happened, I was preparing myself for the worse but somehow hoping it was TB and not cancer. Everything went in but nothing was really sticking until i started hearing the words "The fluid samples show that there is cancer" "At this point we cannot cure it" "We can do things to make it better and help your dad with breathing" How do you feel when you hear this? I wanted to breakdown and cry, but my father was there and I wanted to be strong, my eyes were welling it and it hurt me so much to see that the words were not being fully understood by my father. "Cancer?" For me, the impact of now knowing that he had cancer meant and that it couldn't be stopped started to accelerate the thinking process in my mind. The questions I had were non stopping and I didn't know what to do. You immediately start thinking that a clock with a countdown has now started and you have to imagine your fighting against time. How do you fight a cancer that the doctors say can't be cured? how do you cry when you know you can't when your dad is there? I wanted to hold him and never let him go. For most of my life I have stupidity thought that my dad would never leave my side, and over the past few years I have been preparing myself that my dad would go away mainly due to his old age. But when you are told that it is deinfitely going to happen and you now know it is a definite answer what would you do? The clock was ticking, but the doctors couldn't tell me how long I would have left. After being told by the doctor, he arranged to take out some of the fluid in a few hours time. In teh meantime I would be taken by the other lady to another room for a cup of tea. She turned out to be our macmillan nurse, who is a trained specialist in the field of cancer. She was very helpful and re-explained what the doctor said and at the same time gave more information. I asked her to look after my father where i went into another room to tell my mother what had happened. As soon as I dialled the number and she picked up and said "hello" I started to cry, all the emotions I had to hide away came flooding out in a torrent of tears and i didn't know how to stop. I couldn't say a word, my mind was formulating the sentence but each time my mouth opened more tears came out and my body started to tremble. I composed myself with the soothing words form my mum, but when i had to start to mouth the word "cancer" it became worse, I had felt pain, but nothing so hurtful as now. I felt like I was saying my world has ended. I ended the conversation sayng I was going to be strong and had to go back and sit with my dad. It hurt me whenever I looked at him and you could see that he knew he had cancer but didn't understand the severity or full understanding of what it meant. That day the doctor took out 2pints of fluid from his lung to relief the pain. The result was immediate I could see the spring in my dads side, and I felt relieved. I stayed with my father that night, and it was the first time that I could see my dad no longer being the super man htat I thought he was, he couldn't sleep and kept on waking up every 2-3 hours. When he could sleep he would talk in his sleep and I would try and lsiten and hang onto every word to see if there was some way I could understand. I could write forever, but i'm tired now, i feel better that this is the first step and i will probably end up writing more. My dad has been booked for a Pleurodesis next Wednesday to take the fluid out and allow the doctors to see the extend of his cancer, hopefully then we can understand what stage we are at and how long do i have left to spend with my dad.