My Father

I'm new here too, Mark. But love the way people you never met help so much.
I have no advice...I am too new to this, but I am sending prayers and good wishes for your father and the family.

My husband and I went through similar things with my father-in-law. Best of luck with all this.

Jeanne

Mark,

Has a CT Scan been ordered?

Mark,

I cannot stress to you enough how important a second opinion is. This in and of itself could be the most important decision you as a family and your father in particular make as far as this disease goes. Under staging and overstaying are very prevalent, and surgery is not recommended if the cancer has spread to other organs including the bone. If there is a spread your father will be dealing with enough, and throwing recovery from surgery into the mix is just unnecessary in most cases.

Please Please Please stress the importance of a second opinion to your father. It is always better to have more than one set of eyes looking at all of your fathers information, pathology, scans, reports etc...It can only help...

Karen

Thanks for your response Karen. Yes, results for the bone scan came back inconclusive. MRI has been ordered to shed some more light. As for surgery, our urologist informed us that it is best to remove the bladder and prostate at this point, regardless of spread. As for grade, it was given to us but I need to ask my brother who was at the appointment.

As for the Canadian Cancer society, yet I have been in touch with them and they were very helpful in sending information and taking the time to speak with me. I'm hoping to possibly get contact info for a second opinion as well.

I am hoping some of our Canadian members will soon chime in to help Mark. Did your father get the results of the bone scan yet? Surgery is usually not recommended to those where the cancer has spread to the bone or other organs. But lets not get ahead of ourselves. There is more information that is needed. Have they given your father a stage or grade for his cancer?

Are you close to the University of Toronto? I have heard of a Cancer Center affiliated with the University. Another good contact for you would be the Canadian Cancer Society.

Karen

Many thanks Holly, Karen & Julieanne - amist all the hurt I'm feeling tonight, I'm happy to know that moving forward I have the support of this forum.

Karen, I am located in Toronto, Canada. My father has so far received a bone scan, CAT scan, and had a cystoscopy completed last week. At that point, the urologist realized that there was just too much there and would be pointless to continue scraping. Today we were notified of the invasive cancer and the plan to remove bladder and prostate. I'm assuming the MRI scan will be very telling regarding metastasise.