Hello, I am new to this group and sad that I am here. In Oct my Dad, 80, was diagnosed with terminal Lung cancer - Right Lung and there is no treatment for him as he is too poorly to cope with the damage it will do. - He's doing ok so far. Moving on 9 months and my Mum, 77, had a stroke and 4 weeks later what looked like a heart attack but turned out her Potassium and Sodium levels dropped. This caused seizure like shakes and horrific pain all over her body. All this time we have been concentrating on her stoke and trying very hard to figure out what was going on in her body to cause this. It obviously highlighted something and they scanned her chest area and discovered, only what I can call my worst nightmare. Yesterday, Poor wee soul, She has now been diagnosed with Lung Cancer - Right Lung ( so far, two tumours showing and both different cancers), this has spread to her lymph nodes and her Liver. She has to go for a full PET scan to see if it has spread further and a biopsy, I am assuming to determine types of cancer. I guess after that it will be discussion on what the next steps are. And now googling symptoms this all makes sense to what she was experiencing had nothing to do with stroke. Me, I need someone to be blunt and now!!
Hi Toppy
Sorry to hear about all these problems that are happening to your parents and in turn you. You are correct in that the purpose of the biopsy will be to help identify the type and possibly origin of the cancer. With my wife the cancer was detected in her lungs but the origin was actually a cancerous fibroid in her womb - and that information meant the best treatment was totally different.
Be very careful with google, there are a few really reputable sites like macmillan, cancer research uk where the information is independently verified but there are also lots of horror stories, scams and outright quackery too.
Sometimes it can be useful to listen very carefully to the oncologist, for example do the recommend treatment or just offer it and the wonders of getting a patient to give informed consent can be a real challenge.
Quite often when someone is admitted to A&E the doctors will call for a "U&E" blood test - as an imbalance in these can cause all sorts of symptoms that are often fairly straightforward to treat in the short term though the cause of course still needs to be worked out.
One thing you might like to look at is Your feelings when someone has cancer as I am fairly sure you will recognize some of your feelings in this - I know I leant many of those lessons a harder way and perhaps I was not ready for everything that came our way.
<<hugs>>
Steve
