sad news.

i found out on the 16th [which was my first official day of spring break] that my dad has prostate cancer. i was back home in reno, and he came down to my room in the morning and told me the news. i tried not to cry in front of him, but it was hard... i definitely got teary. i still do now when i think about it.

he's had an elevated PSA for a while, so he had a feeling. i had a feeling about it too. but he decided to wait until his dad passed away to get the biopsy so that his dad wouldn't know...

[you might remember that my grandpa had prostate cancer too.]

anyway. he is going to have surgery towards the end of may in LA. after his surgery, my sister and i will spend about a week with him down there, and then i will take him home. [thank goodness i'll be done with school by then.] the rest of my family will come down as they can get time away from work, and we're going to spend time at disneyland... leave it to my dad to put a fun twist on a crappy situation. :]

he decided to go with the da vinci robotic surgery, and his surgeon has excellent records and lots of experience. so i am trusting that he is in good hands and that everything will be fine during and after the surgery. i'm also hopeful that they will be able to get good margins during the surgery, so we don't have to worry about it anymore. with the da vinci method, the recovery time is generally much quicker than traditional surgery... so maybe he will even be able to enjoy a ride or two. either way, i think he's happy that everyone will be able to come see him during his initial recovery.

i'm not sure if i mentioned that my grandma also found out that she had cancer after my grandpa passed away. she didn't want to have surgery or anything, but her doctor convinced her to go ahead with it. a few days after she got home from the hospital, she collapsed. it turns out that she had a DVT, two pulmonary embolisms, and a stroke because her doctors didn't give her anticoagulant therapy post-surgery, like they should have. :[ she's lost a lot of her speech, memory, ect. it's heartbreaking really. she gets very frustrated now about her situation, but she has made some progress with therapy. my sister told me that she was able to play a whole song on the piano the other day, which is so exciting. but then... she has a hard time setting the table for dinner. and when she was making breakfast the other day, she put the whole egg in the frying pan and forgot to crack it. people keep telling me that they "know someone" who fully recovered after a stroke, and i really want my grandma to be one of those people too. i hope she has the will to continue working on getting better. she's such a strong woman, but i know it's very hard for her to be in this spot now.

school is done in three weeks, and i am so excited to be able to focus on my family and not have the stress of school adding onto everything else that's going on right now. wish me luck on getting through this last stretch of class and exams!