I have a dilemma and I am not sure what to do. My friend just found out that one of her oldest friend’s husband has stage 3 prostate cancer which has metastasized to his bladder. The gentleman is in his 70’s and he does not want to do treatment if it is not going to make a huge difference in his survival time. She called to ask me how rough the chemo therapy and radiation therapy is.
Now I was brutally honest with her. I explained that when my husband had his abdomen radiated for testicular cancer (generally the same area) he was extremely sick. If you think about it the radiation focuses on the stomach, intestines and your whole GI area. When that area gets radiated it is very hard to keep food in it either goes up or down (if you know what I mean) and the nausea and poops are horrible. She said that is what he was afraid of and he did not want to go through all that if it is not going to cure him. He said if it was only going to prolong his life he did not want it to be miserable.
I totally get it and I understand that I had said that if I ever go stomach, esophageal cancer or if my breast cancer came back and was beyond being cured I do not think I would go through all that again. Now if it happened today I may because my kids are still young and any time with them is worthwhile but I wonder if I was in my 70’s and my kids were all grown would I want to go through that again? I honestly do not think I would.
Now I did not want to be the one to tell her survival rates and all that because it is so hard to hear the hurt in someone’s voice so I directed her to the American Cancer Society’s call line. I told her is she got information from them I would help her decipher it but that I did not know much about prostate cancer. I did not lie I don’t know about that one but I could have googled and found the information out for her but I guess I chickened out. I did not want to be the bearer of bad news.
If you were me would you have told her or would you have let someone else tell her?