Hey, I hate to sound like a jerk. You need to go to an oncologist and a urologist.    Especially if you feel like your doctor doesn't communicate well. Talk to the specialist about the part of the body effected and the specialist about cancer.    To circle back to when my father was around and was stricken. I essentially became his nurse maid and cancer researcher for the 1 year he was around. I met and spoke to several patients, and doctors. Been to a lot of funerals, and a few people who turned it around. Saw the same exact story over and over again. I was in remission doc told me I was ok, or I am going to beat this, and we are going tot the best doctors, or I am going to get into experimental program.    Fact is this.... You got lucky finding it when you did. You have reservations about what you are told. Rightfully so. But you dont have the medical background to know for sure and you need to talk to the person who knows a hell of a lot about he kidneys and Cancer. A urologist and oncologist.    What I did run into was a lady who had kidney cancer. Stage 2. When I asked her how she found out she said she felt pain playing basket ball. This gal was in her 50's. She said she found it 22 years ago. They wanted to resect it and she told them to just take the whole thing out.    Then she told me that every 3 years she goes in for a pet scan and makes them do a round of chemo even though she is has been clear. She was not screwing around.    You probably dont need to be that extreme but talk to an oncologist and a urologist. Once it spreads it is extremely difficult o overcome if not impossible. And you have been given an opportunity almost everyone on this board wishes they had.  ... View more

I wish I could be in your shoes.    To give you some context my old man died 6 years ago. At first I thought about him every day. Then every 2 days, then 3 time a week. I still think about him a lot.   All situations are different but for my family, when my pop was sick he did not want to be coddled like a lepar. He wanted to be treated like a normal person.    Have an awesome Christmas, kwanza, easter, birthday, superbowl party or something that you will remember. And take lots of pictures especially if he has not deteriorated yet. I actually deleted and destroyed the ones of my pop the last week. He was a shell of a man he was before. Too hard to look at. But the ones we look at all the time, baseball games, football games, surprise bday party, trip to Vegas. Those moments that you forget someone is sick and you are just being family are the ones you need to hold onto.      ... View more

Dont worry too much about your hair. It is cosmetic and if you come out of the other side of this.....Who cares about your hair. It may grow back it might not. You can get a new rocking wig every week. Purple, Red, Brown Black, blond what ever. The important thing is to come out the other end. The hair is quite literally the least important thing in this situation. There are 100 people on this blog that would apply go bald if it meant hey can get rid of this terrible cancer. Focus on that. The hair is the least important and the easiest thing to solve.      ... View more

All in your head... You just passed one hell of a hard test. Passed it like a pro.    Start your day off thinking I am another extra day in the black. What am I going to do with it? It is a gift given to you and you are wasting it. There are hundreds of people on this blog that would take those days. Do not waste them. Talk to a doctor about your sleep patterns. That is so easy to fix.    You look like you beat it, Now go and do something with the extra time and life you got.      And so what if you drink wine. You beat cancer and there is no reason to feel guilty to drinking a little. Just dont go overboard. A glass a day....... No problem.   Congratulations..... Go do something epic and write back on this blog how you spent the extra time. Make the rest of us dream about what the rest of us are going to do if we are that lucky.      ... View more

So this is going to be difficult to read.... But think about it from her perspective.    Is she to be sad the remainder of her life because you are gone. Why would you want your wife to be unhappy?   I watched my father go. It was terrible. I am positive if there was something on the other side he would come back and at least tell me where the baseball card is. He would have come back and let me know. I swear it. I am positive there is nothing on the other side. So dont worry about it, it is not like you will likely even know about it.    But this is what you should do 1. If you really love the gal.... Set her up right. Get some life insurance, something to pay the house off, vacation, or something like that. Make your peace with it, and forget about it. Give her your blessing so the poor gal is not tormented if it ever does happen.  2. Enjoy yourself. My pop scrapped and saved. died with callous on his hands never enjoying his life. Do something for yourself. If it really is the end for you do something you would have never done for yourself. Help some random person out. Take a trip, Ring up some credit card debit that is unsecured. Go to Egypt and see the Pyramids. Rent a Ferrari and get a couple of speeding tickets tearing around Vegas. DO SOMETHING YOU WOULD HAVE NEVER DONE.  3. If I am wrong and there is something after this thing, and you manage to get there before I do. Tell my dad I want the baseball card. I have looked everywhere and we can not find it. His name was Mario Skala. And tell him to get in touch with me.  4. If I am wrong and there is something after this thing. Find me when I get there. My name is Tony. The first 100 years of drinks between you and I are on me. I really hope there is something . I want to be wrong.    Do something for yourself man. This thinking about things you cant control will make your health worse. GO DO SOMETHING AWESOME and write back on this post. Live it to the max and dont hit the brakes. And set the gal up. I am sure she loves you a great deal.    Hey if you get there before me, and there is really something after this thing. Go ahead and start a tab. I will cover it when I meet you. But only well stuff untill I get there. Then we will hit the top shelf together, Actually You me and my pop. You will like him. He was a decent guy.      ... View more

There is nothing I can write to ease your pain. I can only tell you that with the passage of time the pain becomes less harder to tolerate.    I hope that the only memories you have of her are only of the good times in life.  ... View more

Your husband is upset and taking it out on you because he knows you are his pillar that he can count on you. He is embarrassed because he is not able to do the things he used to do and thinks you look at him differently because he cant. Bury those feelings you have. You will resent him later if he beats it and you will wish you had done more if he doesn't. You need to keep it together because if you dont .... and trust me this is true.... the whole family will fall apart if you dont hold the family together. you are most likely the caring and nurturing person in your house doing more of what is required and not acknowledged for your work. Because it is expected of you, because you can do it, and you do it with out even knowing you are doing it.    You can handle this. My advice, treat him like he doesn't have the cancer and ask him to do things he used to do around the house.    Remember no one will acknowledge your hard work and selflessness. But you and I know whois keeping the house afloat. You are way stronger than you think.  ... View more

My father had balance issues. Could not balance to put his foot though pant leg on sweat pants. He was far along and recovery was just not in the deck......... But a guy I worked with had chemo for a bone cancer. He had balance issues after radiation and chemo, but he went to therapy and got the balance back. but you have to actually do the therapy. No phoning it in. The exercises feel silly but they are done for a reason. Ask you primary doctor to check out your inner ear. That is largely responsible for balance.    And so what.. even if you have to use a cane or stick... That is not the end of the world. stick with rehab. and actually do the work.      ... View more

Sorry to hear of your son's cancer.    Tell your son it is only hair. Tell him bald heads after cancer is about as good as a Purple Heart. Wear it with pride. If it doesn't grow back he doesn't need it.    But if he really wants the hair back.. try Minoxidil   But he should shave it bald and own it. A big FU to cancer and all the BS it brought to him.        ... View more

I am truly sorry to hear of your plight. My father had colon cancer that caused a blockage and he had to get a colostomy bag. It winded up being a god sent for me.    I am going to tell you something you will not want to hear and hopefully they are not going to applicable to you. Beyond stage 3 your survival rate drops dramatically. Once it hits your liver the stats say 6 to 8 months with out chemo. Chemo will give you 4 to 6 months longer.    This will be hard to hear but I promise you every person on the earth will experience death. It is just that not all of us will experience life. My father wanted very badly to live. He was so afraid of dying and not once blamed me for not catching the symptoms sooner. In all honesty I should have. I just did not know what to look for, or was to busy doing something I thought was important that in hind sight was not.    He privately told me before he passed that he wished he did not do the chemo. He got very weak, very fast. Did not enjoy food, and found little pleasure in anything he did. His diagnosis was always tugging at him. That bag he had was so helpful to me because without it I would have had to help him to the toilet all the time as my mom could not stomach it. That bag made care a lot more easy. He also had kidney issues requiring injections but he wanted pills. We forced him onto the injections and once we got the pattern down it was not hard to manage.    He remained fairly lucid and strong until about 3 weeks before he died. And the last three weeks were not kind to him. His liver and kidneys failed and thank god I had a good employer because I took 2 months off to care for him and it was a 20 hour a day job. Too little too late. Trips to dialysis, his chemo treatments for 4 hours. Watching him from bringing roofing bundles up a ladder all day to barley being able to steady himself to put on sweat pants was difficult.    My father did take out a policy on himself for my sister and I to help out. And we tried to take his mind off things and do things he always wanted to do but never did. And to this day those things we did while he had cancer that were bucket list things are the memories I cherish most. 700 dollar seats at a giants game, a surprise birthday party, buying a new car, purposely getting a speeding ticket because he knew he would not have to pay it, running up credit card debt because they could not come after him for it, picking fruit, making wine, watching the Giants win in 2012, buying a 68 Camaro driving up the coast, 120 dollar steaks,  Lots of other little things..   He had the decency to make it easy on my mom and sister because he did not once complain about it. Enjoy the time you have with your loved ones. Don't dwell on your situation. Listen to your doctors, get a second opinion but don't grab at straws that are not there. Do exactly what they tell you? When they give you good news take it gracefully, when they give you bad news...... don't blame them. Oncologists have crap jobs. There patients die more often than they live. I remember very naively arguing with the doctor about resection and embolization and how the cea markers were down and he was stronger than the week before. I did not want to hear the doctor telling me that the body does that before it really shuts down. Body doing a last push. They see it all the time and they see people like me all the time, looking for trials and experimental treatments, praying and hoping it will go away. They know the science and the time extension a treatment will give you. they know experimental treatments are not to help you , but more to help the people after you 5 years down the road.    Please enjoy your time. Your loved ones will thank you for it.    I hope I am wrong about all of this. But either way take stock of your life reestablish connections with people you got out of touch with, repair broken relationships, and enjoy your life.    I hope you are one of the ones that flips off cancer and the science.    ... View more