Time for a (serious, mood-wise) update.
Found out a lot about my dad's health today, and the complications he's got. Had a long talk with my mother, found out a lot of things I didn't know.
First off, my father has heart problems. Through sheer dumb luck he found out all of his arteries were severely clogged sometime in 2006, and got a stint. He's one of those people with "heart complications".
He's a Vietnam veteran. He contracted a type of cancer and it was discovered around the same time the heart problem was. He had to get an operation to take a large (6x12 centimeters) tumor out of his liver. As of yet the cancer hasn't come back, though in the past few months a few small bright spots have popped up according to the doctor, so they're keeping an eye out.
He also has Hepatitis C (B is the STD version, this is transferred through blood).
My father has already been very, very lucky. He survived Vietnam, and has quite a bit of shrapnel in his body.
I knew all of this already.
What I found out;
My father has Hepatocelluar carcinoma (HCC), which is primary liver cancer. Almost all of the time, liver cancer is a complication of another cancer.. Because the liver deals with taking out toxins from the rest of your body, if you have a cancer, chances are it'll spread to your liver. So when people say "liver cancer", they mean that.
HCC develops and starts from the liver, about 80% of the time from cirrhosis, rarely from Hep B/C. My dad got it from his Hep C (which he probably contracted from all the blood-to-blood contact in Vietnam).
HCC is usually fatal because there are basically no symptoms one can notice by themselves until it's far, far too late. It's one of the few diseases where it kills because it's undetectable unless you have an operation/scan/etc. Most people who find out they have it are already doomed, and have less than 6 months, because it's already too developed to be removed. It's very, very rare in the US, and it can grow in one of three ways.
1. One LARGE tumor (what my dad had).
2. 2-5 medium sized tumors.
3. A lot, possibly hundreds, of small tumors.
Because you can't remove your liver, in most cases surgery is impossible because you have to catch it before it has done too much damage OR spread too far (so usually you can't have had it grown in the third way)... My father was lucky enough to fall into both categories, and had it taken out (about a third of his liver is gone).
Let me re-stress how rare HCC is; I live near Yale University (yes, the Ivy League school and no, I didn't go). Yale is known for its medical prowess/programs, and has one the second largest academic library in the world (first, of course, is Harvard). My mother works for Yale, so she has access to basically every medical file they have. In total, there are 6 records of HCC documentation. Six.
That's fucking scary.
It is mind blowing to think about how lugging a TV up some stairs for someone he doesn't like saved my fathers life three times over. Without it he wouldn't have known about his heart problems, Hep C, or the HCC.
Then that he even managed to survive this long with those complications (he was born in 1950).
That he fell into the small percentage of people who had their HCC develop as one large tumor.
That he fell into the small percentage of THOSE people who were able to have it removed because it hadn't spread over one of the main arteries of the liver (which is common, and would make it inoperable).
That he found a doctor (Ronald Salem) who could perform the liver surgery, was a liver tumor specialist, understood HCC, and had both the skill and, frankly, the BALLS to perform a potentially fatal operation on a man with an active, transmitted-through-blood disease (the Hep C).
Anyone who knew me when I was younger will tell you; I've always had rather crappy luck, and I've been very, very vocal (read: bitchy) about it. Very.
I believe in balance.. For every negative issue someone has, there's a positive. There's a reason they're negative. I believe that for every time you have bad luck, you or someone else will have good luck. I believe, to a point in karma.
I used to complain about my bad luck... Looking back on how lucky my father has been, well... If that's what me dealing with bad luck can cause, what right do I have to complain?
First off, my father has heart problems. Through sheer dumb luck he found out all of his arteries were severely clogged sometime in 2006, and got a stint. He's one of those people with "heart complications".
He's a Vietnam veteran. He contracted a type of cancer and it was discovered around the same time the heart problem was. He had to get an operation to take a large (6x12 centimeters) tumor out of his liver. As of yet the cancer hasn't come back, though in the past few months a few small bright spots have popped up according to the doctor, so they're keeping an eye out.
He also has Hepatitis C (B is the STD version, this is transferred through blood).
My father has already been very, very lucky. He survived Vietnam, and has quite a bit of shrapnel in his body.
I knew all of this already.
What I found out;
My father has Hepatocelluar carcinoma (HCC), which is primary liver cancer. Almost all of the time, liver cancer is a complication of another cancer.. Because the liver deals with taking out toxins from the rest of your body, if you have a cancer, chances are it'll spread to your liver. So when people say "liver cancer", they mean that.
HCC develops and starts from the liver, about 80% of the time from cirrhosis, rarely from Hep B/C. My dad got it from his Hep C (which he probably contracted from all the blood-to-blood contact in Vietnam).
HCC is usually fatal because there are basically no symptoms one can notice by themselves until it's far, far too late. It's one of the few diseases where it kills because it's undetectable unless you have an operation/scan/etc. Most people who find out they have it are already doomed, and have less than 6 months, because it's already too developed to be removed. It's very, very rare in the US, and it can grow in one of three ways.
1. One LARGE tumor (what my dad had).
2. 2-5 medium sized tumors.
3. A lot, possibly hundreds, of small tumors.
Because you can't remove your liver, in most cases surgery is impossible because you have to catch it before it has done too much damage OR spread too far (so usually you can't have had it grown in the third way)... My father was lucky enough to fall into both categories, and had it taken out (about a third of his liver is gone).
Let me re-stress how rare HCC is; I live near Yale University (yes, the Ivy League school and no, I didn't go). Yale is known for its medical prowess/programs, and has one the second largest academic library in the world (first, of course, is Harvard). My mother works for Yale, so she has access to basically every medical file they have. In total, there are 6 records of HCC documentation. Six.
That's fucking scary.
It is mind blowing to think about how lugging a TV up some stairs for someone he doesn't like saved my fathers life three times over. Without it he wouldn't have known about his heart problems, Hep C, or the HCC.
Then that he even managed to survive this long with those complications (he was born in 1950).
That he fell into the small percentage of people who had their HCC develop as one large tumor.
That he fell into the small percentage of THOSE people who were able to have it removed because it hadn't spread over one of the main arteries of the liver (which is common, and would make it inoperable).
That he found a doctor (Ronald Salem) who could perform the liver surgery, was a liver tumor specialist, understood HCC, and had both the skill and, frankly, the BALLS to perform a potentially fatal operation on a man with an active, transmitted-through-blood disease (the Hep C).
Anyone who knew me when I was younger will tell you; I've always had rather crappy luck, and I've been very, very vocal (read: bitchy) about it. Very.
I believe in balance.. For every negative issue someone has, there's a positive. There's a reason they're negative. I believe that for every time you have bad luck, you or someone else will have good luck. I believe, to a point in karma.
I used to complain about my bad luck... Looking back on how lucky my father has been, well... If that's what me dealing with bad luck can cause, what right do I have to complain?