That appointment

Its been a week since the news we were dreading so here goes.

Me and my sisers attended the appointment with my Dads consultant, straight of we were introduced to a new Doctor who would be joining us, a doctor that specialised in palliative treatment, working with the Macmillan team of nurses and with St Francis hospice.

We asked my doctors consultant to go through everything she had told my dad in his last appointment.

Basically due to the extent of damage to my fathers kidneys they are unable to give him any further chemo, as it would be too toxic for his body to handle and in her words "potentially bring on death faster" A normal persons creatine ranges from 90- 150. My fathers creatine levels have shot up from around 150 to 380 in 5 weeks, which suggests to her that the Myeloma is very active, and if she were to do a bone marrow test the levels of Cancer cells would be pretty high. He is not eligible for dialysis as someone requiring this needs to have a creatine level of around 800-900. She told us his kidneys have been failing for about a year and they classify his kidneys as renal failure. Therefore for this reason she needs to work with the new doctor to focus on what they can do improve his quality of his life and work to treat the symptoms.

The morphine he has been taking for so long will now be swapped for a new kind of pain killer in the form of a patch. He will also stop taking his oromorph and this will be replaced with something else, to ease the pressure on his kidneys. Any type of infection could now be fatal therefore the doctors made sure that my dad will always have someone around to be there for him.

The doctor asked my dad how he had been dealing with the disease and the news that he was given and his reply was " We all have to leave this world in some way or the next, I was worried at first but i accept the news and im just fine, its only when i have bad days that I actually realise im ill"

Having a week to deal with this has made a difference his doctor at Queens Hospital has been fantastic, you could see in her eyes that she was upset when talking to us and I appreciated that she cared for him. She called my dad a soldier for his ability to just keep going. The main focus for him is for him to go on this pilgrimage in a few weeks time, its taking his mind of things and reminds us all that actually noone knows when their time will come, but if that time is a little sooner then im grateful that he is able to do all the things he need to, to put his mind at ease.

My dad is absolutely amazing!