My father-in-law had difficulty urinating so my wife and I took him to A&E last year. They kept him in hospital and sorted out his prostatitis with the TURP operation.
At a follow-up appointment with the surgeon and a consultant oncologist, the surgeon was running through the blood tests and explaining the operation etc and simply mentioned in passing "Of course, you have been told it is cancerous." My FIL didn't really pick up on what was being said but my wife started to cry. The surgeon was talking in a constant stream so I had to be forceful to butt in to ask him if he had just used the word 'cancerous'. (This is not criticism - I know how brilliant these medical people are - I am seeking clarity on what we ought to have expected).
Roll forward a year - FIL has been on Bicalutamide to try to lower his PSA and Prostap injections once every three months. His PSA is being checked 3 monthly too. PSA started to come down then before Xmas going up again. It passed 200 & now passed 300.
The next oncologist appointment was not till today. Since FIL is 84 he wasn't suitable for chemo last year. Our hope was once he PSA was down he would start radiation to treat the PC. We were expecting consultant today to say that they would have to try something stronger to get PDA down.
Instead she says he can stop taking the Bicalutamide since PSA not coming down and they won't give radiation treatment since he is in the terminal phase and then she tells us she can fast-track getting him into a nursing home since he has about 3 months left.
Is this the normal method for breaking news to people or is this pretty poor (again - I am not criticising - I am well aware of how busy they are and how much they achieve) communication? It feels like they know stuff about how far it's spread that they have not shared (we saw his blood tests flagged up something about his liver for instance but she didn't even mention that). Are there protocols about whether or not to tell a patient's carers certain info that might affect their ability to continue caring?
I just imagined (this is my first contact with this area) everything would be extremely sensitively managed and organised and a clear picture of the alternative roads ahead mapped out for us. Instead we are trying to reset our heads which are reeling from the handgrenade-style revelations lobbed at us.
And something else I feel rather worried about - they are at this moment trying to find a bed for him to stay a few nights at the hospital for an unrelated infection - but they just told my wife (she texted me a few minutes ago) - that they will not resuscitate him if he dies while in hospital. We went to the appointment today expecting to be told about new ideas to treat him and now they are implying he might die this week.