Turns out it's metastatic melanoma, and it's stage IV, which means that it's spread to places other than the skin cells where it started. The places I know of are his lymph nodes and liver. He's going to head over to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, since his oncologist advised him that there's a team that specializes in melanoma over there. Clinical trials are a possibility, but if there aren't any new treatments to be tried, then 'regular' chemotherapy will start in a bit less than three weeks.
I'm pretty bummed about it, but probably not as much as my dad is. My dad had called me to let me know what he knew as I was coming back from lunch with a vendor. Not really a pleasant way to end a conversation, but the guy I was with was very kind and understanding about it.
I've sort of been caught in between immersing myself in work as a means of denying it's going on and the fact that I'm having a bit of a hard time concentrating on work at all because it's going on.
Then throw the fact that it's 360s season at work, and I'm just about ready to implode under the weight of all this introspection.
At least they found the termite nest while doing the water damage/fungus repairs, but that's another story.
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