Hello Amy,

Sorry you found yourself in need of a site like this, but glad you found it. Fear is a perfectly normal reaction to this stuff. There's nothing wrong with being affraid. It's how we deal with that fear that is important.

I read in the news about a recent study in Australia involving cancer patients and attitude. What they found was that a positive attitude didn't help improve survivability, but it did help quality of life. Once you start down the cancer path, you find that quality of life becomes nearly paramount. My point here is not to fret too much about your dad's current attitude. In addition to this situation being new to you, it's new to him and sometimes us guys are kind of funny in how we process emotions. And a diagnosis like this is emotionally overwhelming for everyone.

Obvously, your dad is having a rough time. Neck dissection, teeth being pulled and looking forward to radiation therapy and chemo, which are unknowns to him right now. Fear of the unknown is THE worst. He has no idea how he'll handle the radiation and chemo. All he knows is what he's heard, which is probably mostly wrong and what ever the docs and nurses have told him, which probably isn't much. Myself, I had long curly brown hair when my own journey started and you can't imagine the feeling when it starts falling out in clumps from the chemo. At this point, I refused to let the chemo be in charge and shaved my head.

On the plus side, my hair is back and I'm growing it out again. (It's still curly) I got through my treatments and we have every reason to believe your dad will get through his. Don't get too discouraged by his lack of opening up. He's still trying to adjust to the situation and figure out how he's going to deal with all this. To his credit, he has you as his daughter and I am sure there are many others who love him and will help him through this. I would suggest that you try and relax a little and let him have what ever space he needs to deal with this while remaining supportive.

Hang in there...

-Brett