Tom Paredes

Welcome to our CaringBridge website.  Since Tom was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer, family and friends have asked for info on how things are progressing.  We we thought it best to use  this site to keep family and friends updated in one place. We truly appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

Now let's bring you up to date:

Tom was initially diagnosed via a biopsy done in June based on raised PSA levels found in his annual blood work.  The diagnosis was a bit of a shock as Tom was (and is) feeling great and has very little history of cancer in his family.  The good news is that the cancer was caught early.  The not so great news is that it's an aggressive form of prostate cancer.   However,  we are happy that a subsequent pelvic scan and bone scan came back clean, which means that the cancer has probably not spread outside the prostate.  


After consulting with several doctors in Wilmington,  we decided to seek the best care available and spent a long day at Duke Cancer Center with three top specialists.  Since there are a variety of ways to deal with prostate cancer (surgery, radiation, chemo), each with their own side effects, our goal was to come out of our visit in Durham with a clear gameplan for treatment.   And we did...surgery...based on one more test.


Our next appointment at Duke will be in late August/early September for a special 3D MRI that will give a clear picture of where the cancer is and if it's indeed constrained to the prostate.  If so, we will proceed with surgery in mid October.   We were very fortunate, via a friend of my Mom's, to be connected with Dr. Thomas Polascik, Duke's highly regarded prostate cancer surgeon.  Sitting with him gave us great confidence that surgery will be the most effective treatment.  


So, if all goes as expected, it won't be long until Tom is back to his normal self.  We are all in good spirits and confident that this is but a bump in the road.  We are very lucky to have the friends and family that we do to surround us as we take this on.  Your love and support is tremendously comforting to us.


We will be updating this as much as possible to ensure that anyone who cares to has a place to check in and be a part of this with us. 

Thank you - and we love you all! 


Kate (and Tom and the boys)